As celestial objects go , the Crab Nebula is still an infant . The spectacular nebula is less than 1000 year old and concord a rapidly pulsing neutron star at its center . A newfangled close - up image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the nebula in all its dynamical aura .
Active as it seems to us today , this flashing cosmic swarm was bear of something even more exciting : the explosion of the Crab ace in the year 1054 CE . The supernova was so monumental and trigger-happy that it wasplainly visibleto humans on Earth . Taiwanese and Nipponese astronomers recorded the astonishing consequence and watched the explosion ’s remains until they faded from view .
The volume of the Crab star blew into stellar dust . Its core survived and became a preposterously dense body called a neutron star . This star has the same mass as our Sun , all crammed into a sphere about 20 kilometers across . It whirls at a breathless rate , pulsing once every 33 endorsement .
That intense action is rendered beautifully in the new Hubble image , which is actually a complex of three super - high - resolution pictures , each in a different colouring , taken about 10 years apart . The ikon demonstrate the neutron star ( that ’s the rightmost of the two brilliant lead ) and its strobe - similar beams of vigour , as well as the glitter dust created by that first enormous explosion . The fairly blue glow is the result of electron whizzing through the neutron star ’s vivid magnetic field at nearly the pep pill of luminousness .
clack the image below for a tightlipped feel .
Not too ratty , Hubble . Not too moth-eaten .
Bonus : desire to see the fiery Crab for yourself ? Get yourself a yoke ofstrong field glasses , question for some unmortgaged , coloured sky , and look right between the horns of the constellation Taurus .
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