The Crab Nebula is an almost unique physical object . It ’s made of the leftover of a spectacular supernova and astronomer have been studying it since it exploded in 1054 . Now , by combining five different telescopes , stargazer have detect it in sensational detail in our best image yet .
In a paper published in theAstrophysical Journal , astronomers discourse the complex social organization seen in the nebula , which is 6,500 loose - years away . Some of the complex body part we observe today appear to have formed before the factual supernova , for exercise , two bays realise Mae West and east of the center . It also has odd feature article that seem to be interchangeable to solar colonnade , a big bucks of coronal loops made of plasma . These are formed by the interaction between high - speed molecule and intense magnetic field in the nebula .
“ Comparing these newfangled images , made at different wavelength , is providing us with a wealth of new detail about the Crab Nebula . Though the Crab has been meditate extensively for years , we still have much to learn about it , ” lead author Gloria Dubner , from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina and the National Council of Scientific Research , say in astatement .
The paradigm is a theme of the radiocommunication observation from the Very Large Array ( VLA ) , infrared data from Spitzer , visible image from Hubble , the ultraviolet views from XMM - Newton , and the X - beam emission as seen by Chandra .
If this was n’t already pretty cool . The observation by the VLA , Hubble , and Chandra were all made in November 2012 , giving an almost simultaneous view of this object . Using these double , the team operate out that there are at least two source of synchrotron radiation .
The irradiation is clearly being induced or make by the millisecond pulsar that powers the Crab Nebula . When the supernova exploded , it left in its wake an incredibly dense neutron star with an acute magnetized field and spin so speedily that it give out pulse rate of irradiation every 33 milliseconds .
The pulsar weighs 4.6 times the mass of our Sun , but it is tiny for starring standards , estimated to be between 28 and 30 km ( 17 to 19 mile ) across , which is a droplet in the ocean of the Crab Nebula , which measures over 5 light - years across . The supernova that originated it was first recorded by Taiwanese astronomers in the eleventh hundred , and its mix of a pulsar nebula and a supernova remainder has fascinated many since .
