This extraordinary view of the nebula is one that has never been seen before. But although we had many lovely photographs of the outer region, we didn’t know very much about the inner portion of the nebula.
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Nearly as incredible as what the researchers found is the effort it took to see past the Crab Nebula’s exterior to the inside. Unlike other images taken of the object, this is a composite of three different images taken by the telescope approximately ten years apart, meaning it captures the inside of the nebula over the course of three decades.
The neutron star, at the center of the nebula, has roughly the same mass as our sun, but is compressed into a sphere only a few miles across. It spins 30 times each second, sending out energy beams that appear to pulsate. The rapid motion of the material nearest to the central star is revealed by the subtle rainbow of colours in this time-lapse image, the rainbow effect being due to the movement of material over the time between one image and another. The nebula’s supernova core sends out regular shockwave-like pulses of radiation and charged particles.
The Crab Nebula, which lies 6500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), is the result of a supernova – a colossal explosion that was the dying act of a massive star.
In the image, you can easily spot the fine details of swirling glowing gas surrounding the star, which is shown in red. This glow is radiation given off by electrons spiralling in the powerful magnetic field around the star at almost the speed of light [1].
According to ESA officials, this region around the neutron star reveals violent physical processes that are very extreme. Several years passed before the star was no longer visible to skygazers, in the days before telescopes.
The radiation signature was first detected in 1968.
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“By studying and following the emission of the Crab, we get a ringside seat for understanding how young neutron stars and supernova remnants develop”, Summers said. “Bright wisps are moving outward from the neutron star at half the speed of light to form an expanding ring”, NASA notes. The explosion that formed the nebula was seen from Earth in the year CE 1054, making the event one of the first supernovae ever recorded in history.
