The Crab Nebula

One day in 1054, people looked up at the sky and saw a new ‘Guest star’ appear. It was the first recorded supernova, today known as the crab nebula. About 6500 light years from earth, this beautiful cloud of gases is a birthplace for new stars spanning a diameter of 11 light years.

It hides one of the most hostile creatures in its heart, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star with a spin rate of 30 times per second. Fast, isn’t it? This beast makes the crab nebula very visible, not in the visible spectrum but in the X-ray and gamma spectrum, so get those magic gamma glasses out and look out for the crab nebula in the sky.

Do you know what makes this beautiful beast so special? It was created right in front of our eyes; humanity actually saw the whole process the day the sky went boom! Up until today, when it looked like a crab, it's like we grew with this nebula, and our upcoming generations will look up into the sky, saying, Look at that beauty. (If we don’t kill ourselves, that is.)

Crab nebula

One more interesting fact about the nebula, or, I must say, the whole universe, is that this nebula is just an illusion. What? How?. Yes, it may have already disappeared, gone swooping into the darkness, or something like that. But how are we looking at it then? That’s the thing we are looking at in the 6500-year-old picture of the nebula. Interesting right, the light that reached us today started traveling 6500 years ago from the nebula, so basically everything you see up there is in the past, and that little telescope, yeah, it’s a freaking time machine.

Image credits: NASA

---Ritvik (MS23)