This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.
The orange filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula's eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star's rotation. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star.
The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope. When viewed by Hubble, as well as by large ground-based telescopes such as the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the Crab Nebula takes on a more detailed appearance that yields clues into the spectacular demise of a star, 6,500 light-years away.
The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen.
Credits
NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Crab Nebula, NGC 1952 |
| Object Description | Supernova Remnant |
| R.A. Position | 05h 34m 32.0s |
| Dec. Position | 22° 0' 51.99" |
| Constellation | Taurus |
| Distance | The distance to NGC 1952 is 6500 light-years (2.0 kpc). |
| Dimensions | The image is 6 arcminutes along the bottom (12 light-years or 3.7 pc). |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposal : J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University), W. Blair and R. Sankrit (Johns Hopkins University), and P.Scowen (Arizona State University). D. de Martin (www.skyfactory.org, Venice, Italy) also helped in the creation of this image. |
| Instrument | HST>WFPC2 |
| Exposure Dates | October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000 |
| Filters | F502N ([O III]), F631N ([O I]), F673N ([S II]) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | Blue: F631N ([O I]) Green: F673N ([S II]) Red: F502N ([O III]) |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
