Astronomers come together to take a picture of the Crab nebula and it is absolutely gorgeous

Saul Bowden

May 10, 2017

Given how divided the world is today it is good to remind ourselves that when we come together we are capable of creating and doing incredible things. Observatories and astronomers have pooled their resources and worked together to bring us the most detailed picture of the Crab Nebula to date. I have to say that It is absolutely breathtaking.

The Crab nebula was forged by a dying Star. As the star died it caused the most gigantic explosion known in space, a supernova. The supernova occurred around 6,500 light years away from Earth. What we see today is the remnants of the explosion. The Crab Nebula was first observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054.

The light that shines from the center like a stellar lighthouse is a superdense Neutron star. The star rotates once every 33 milliseconds and shoots out a beam consisting of radio waves and lights, or a pulsar. The bright light helps to create the ethereal beauty of the Crab Nebula as the light plays off against the swirling debris ejected during the star’s explosion.

The bright light at the center of Nebula is the Neutron Star – credit NASA

The image was constructed by combining photos from a number of different wavelengths. The picture of the Crab Nebula combines images from five different telescopes; The VLA (radio), The Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared), The Hubble Space Telescope (visible), The XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) and Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-ray). These images were then overlaid in order to create a complete picture of the crab nebula. You can see how they fit together in the video below.

The observations were all made at around the same time in 2012. A team of scientists led by Gloria Dubner of the Institute of Astronomy and Physics,  the National Council of Scientific Research and the University of Buenos Aires then conducted a thorough analysis of the of the images in order to try gain a better understand of the Crab Nebula.  The hope is that the combined picture of the crab nebula will help provide a new level of understanding for this complex stellar object.

This isn’t the first time that our exploration of space has uncovered stunning images. From the JunoCam capturing the skies of Jupiter, to the Hubble snatching a  glimpse of the Auroras of Uranus our exploration of the stars has revealed some stunning beauty. I really hope that it continues to do so, because they take my breath away every time.