The wispy tendrils of a long-dead star curl around a dense sphere of extraordinary power in this spooky view of the Crab Nebula .
The star that became the Crab Nebula went supernova centuries ago, from Earth’s perspective — in 1054, it burned so brightly that skywatchers could see it shining during the day for more than three weeks, according to records from the time , and its fires were visible to the naked eye at night for two years. [Boo! The Spookiest Nebula Photos Ever ]
The excess gas stretches outward from the dead star’s location, 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, and it conceals a powerful heart: a neutron star with the sun’s mass packed into just a few miles’ diameter. The object spins 30 times a second, generating a trillion volts of power and creating an expanding series of shock waves (seen in the center of the photo). Its regular spin and radiation toward Earth make it a pulsar, which researchers use as cosmic clocks .
An eerie view of the Crab Nebula shows a powerful neutron star shrouded in the gas from a supernova explosion. The energy from the swiftly spinning neutron star creates an expanding ring of waves through the debris (visible at center).
Credit: NASA and ESA
The image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope over the course of nine months in 2012, and was given a green hue in honor of Halloween, Hubble scientists said in a statement . The whole gaseous tableau stretches 10 light-years across.
Our own sun is smaller than the star that created this stellar graveyard, so its ultimate fate will leave a different scene. As the sun’s fuel supply runs down and it begins fusing heavier elements, it will grow larger and larger — first swallowing up Mercury’s, then Venus’, then Earth’s current orbit. Its outer layers will puff away, creating a shell-like nebula of gas . The stellar core will be left as a dense white dwarf star, near the size of Earth — the solar system’s final resting place, shrouded in a gauzy planetary nebula.
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook and Google+ . Original article on Space.com .
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