In July 1504, astronomers in China documented the presence of a “guest star” in the sky that shined as brightly as Jupiter for about a month before gradually fading into oblivion.
This “star” was actually a cloud of debris blasted into space by a dying star about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. In the 19th century, the Irish astronomer Lord Ross named the strange object “. The Crab NebulaNot least because It seems to be “Rivers run like claws in every direction.”
New mosaic of the nebula by Orion James Webb Space Telescope He traces those “claws” in fascinating new detail. For the first time, we are able to see the cage-like structures formed from countless dust grains, which can be seen prominently as a thin purple material in the upper right and lower left regions in Webb’s image of the nebula. Unlike others Supernova Astronomers say that from the remnants of dust that dominates the central regions, much of the crab’s dust reservoir is packed into the filaments of the outer shell.
“The Crab Nebula lives up to a tradition in astronomy: the closest, brightest, best-studied objects tend to be exotic,” study co-author Nathan Smith of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory said in an article. statement.
Since it exploded as a supernova, the star’s material shell has been expanding at a speed of about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) per second and now extends about 11 light-years across. The Crab Nebula is a well-studied object thanks to its cosmic proximity, but despite decades of observations, details of the explosion have remained elusive.
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Like most massive stars at the end of their lives, the star at the heart of the Crab Nebula may have begun its death when it began producing iron. Unlike other items produced during Nuclear fusion – The process that powers stars, which fuses hydrogen into heavier elements – iron requires more energy than it releases, meaning the star ended up succumbing to its own gravity and collapsing in on itself.
The crab’s heart is now governed by rapid rotation PulsarIn a web image, it appears as a bright white dot in the center, with magnetic field lines emerging from it as thin blue bands undulating in a ripple-like pattern.
a paper A description of these results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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