The Crab Nebula

In the year 1054 A.D., Chinese astronomers were startled by the appearance of a new star that was so bright that it was visible in broad daylight for several weeks. Located about 6,500 light-years from Earth, the Crab Nebula is the remnant of a star that began its life with about 10 times the mass of our sun. Its life ended on July 4, 1054 when it exploded as a supernova. High Resolution Image (1.66 MB)

Resembling an abstract painting by Jackson Pollack, the image shows ragged shards of gas that are expanding away from the explosion site at over 3 million miles per hour. The core of the star has survived the explosion as a pulsar, a neutron star that spins on its axis 30 times a second. It heats its surroundings, creating the ghostly diffuse bluish-green glowing gas cloud in its vicinity. The colorful network of filaments is the material from the outer layers of the star that was expelled during the explosion. The various colors in the picture arise from different chemical elements in the expanding gas, including hydrogen (orange), nitrogen (red), sulfur (pink), and oxygen (green). The shades of color represent variations in the temperature and density of the gas, as well as changes in the elemental composition.

Image Credit: NASA, Kris Davidson (U. Minn.), William P. Blair (JHU), Robert A. Fesen (Dartmouth), Alan Uomoto (JHU), Gordon M. MacAlpine (U. Mich.), and Richard B.C. Henry (U. Okla.)

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