Thursday, December 01, 2005

Crab Nebula

The Crab Nebula

The six-light-year-wide Crab Nebula,
the remnant of a supernova explosion nearly a thousand years ago.

The Crab Nebula is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. This composite image was assembled from 24 individual exposures taken with the NASA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. It is one of the largest images taken by Hubble and is the highest resolution image ever made of the entire Crab Nebula. (Image from NASA and ESA)

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