On Wednesday, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) released a stunning composite of the supernova remnant Cygnus Loop that was processed by University of Alaska Anchorage professor Travis Rector, using images captured nine years ago.

At 600 million pixels, the dazzling photo is one of the largest astronomical images ever created, according to NOAO's press release.

The Cygnus Loop is a large supernova remnant about 1,500 light years away, the "remains of a massive star that exploded about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago," Rector explained.

In 2003, Richard Cool, a then-graduate student at the University of Arizona, snapped the images of the Cygnus Loop alongside Rector, his advisor at the time. Cool captured a 3-by-3- foot grid of images, snapping 9 images total, with a wide-field Mosaic camera on the WIYN (Wisconsin Indiana Yale National Observatory) 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona.

However, "computers just weren't powerful enough to process all the information," Rector explained. When Rector's team attempted to create a full-size image, the high-powered photo processing program Photoshop froze up and crashed.

By 2012, some nine years after the images were captured, computer technology caught up and a composite photo could be made, creating the brilliant image the National Optical Astronomy Observatory just released.

"There have been many images of this object, but none at this resolution," Rector said.

The reason this image is so large is two-fold: first, the Mosaic camera used to snap the photos consists of eight cameras in one. It takes pictures using all 8 lenses at once, producing an image that is already "really large."

Secondly, this image combined nine of those already-large photos, to create the huge image available today.

The image is so large the full resolution could be printed out in 7-foot-by-7-foot format while retaining its high resolution.

The colors in the image aren't how they would appear to the naked eye; instead, they show various elements and how hot they are. In this image, oxygen, sulfur and hydrogen-alpha are blue, green and red, respectively.

Cygnus Loop is "actually very big," Rector said. To an observer on Earth, it would appear 45 times the size of the moon if it were bright enough. But, unfortunately, the object is too faint to see. That's where color filters come in.

Rector has worked as an astronomer at UAA for nine years. Before that, he was in New Mexico, working at the Very Large Array astronomical radio observatory. And before that, he was at the University of Arizona. In addition to his published research, he specializes in astrophotography, beautiful images of space that you can browse on his website.

"Images like this are amazing because they can remind you of the big picture and the beauty that surrounds us," Dr. Cool, now at the MMT Observatory in Arizona, said. The observatory, at 8,585 feet on Mount Hopkins, some 40 miles south of Tucson, is shared by the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Arizona.

You can download the full-size 1686.5 MB TIFF image here (be warned, this file is large), or download other versions on the NOAO page. A 2000-pixel-wide version of the image is what I'm now using for my desktop background.