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Hubble Photographs the Crab Nebula’s Beating Heart

The photograph is a composite of three images each taken a decade apart and shows the swirling center of the Crab Nebula in unprecedented detail.
Image: ESA/NASA.

6500 light-years away from Earth is one of the Universe's most photogenic objects: the Crab Nebula.

This iconic cloud of gas is the result of a giant explosion produced by a dying star—known as a supernova—and at the center of the nebula the innermost core of this long dead star remains. This core is a neutron star, an incredibly dense (it has about the same mass as our Sun, but packed into a sphere only a few dozen miles in diameter) and exotic stellar object that spins 30 times per second. It is, as the ESA calls it, the Crab Nebula's "beating heart," and a new time-lapse photo from NASA and the European Space Agency has captured its movement in unprecedented detail.

Released on Thursday, the photo is actually a composite of three images each taken a decade apart and the result is an intimate look at how the center of the Crab Nebula has changed over 20-odd years of observation. The rainbow ripple effect around the neutron star is a result of the extreme processes produced by its rapid spin and composition being captured over time. The red filaments in the photo are comprised of ionized gasses, while the blue glow nearest to the center is radiation produced by electrons swirling around in the neutron star's magnetic field at nearly the speed of light.

While the photo may look more like art than science, it is an important piece of the puzzle for astronomers working to understand the mechanisms behind the lives and deaths of stars.