Posted on 08/24/2025 2:39:05 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: At the core of the Crab Nebula lies a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the center of the gaseous swirl at the nebula's core. About twelve light-years across, the spectacular picture frames the glowing gas, cavities and swirling filaments near the Crab Nebula's center. The featured picture combines visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope in purple, X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue, and infrared light from the Spitzer Space Telescope in red. Like a cosmic dynamo, the Crab pulsar powers the emission from the nebula, driving a shock wave through surrounding material and accelerating the spiraling electrons. With more mass than the Sun and the density of an atomic nucleus,the spinning pulsar is the collapsed core of a massive star that exploded. The outer parts of the Crab Nebula are the expanding remnants of the star's component gases. The supernova explosion was witnessed on planet Earth in the year 1054.
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Different!
Forces beyond human ken.
The appearance of the supernova that created the Crab Nebula happened at the same time of the schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy in mid-1054.
Strangely, nobody at the time seemed to link the two events.
Some of these stars have the strongest magnetic fields in the universe. If Earth was in orbit around one at the distance of the Moon the magnetism alone would be lethal.
That is cool!
Agreed. Seeing images like this always reminds me just how puny human pretensions really are.
The more we know, the more we realize how much we don’t know.
Some real weird stuff out there.
1,800 RPM is impressive.
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