A star's spectacular death in the constellation Taurus was observed on
Earth as the supernova of 1054 A.D. Now, almost a thousand years later, a
superdense neutron star left behind by the stellar death is spewing out a
blizzard of extremely high-energy particles into the expanding debris
field known as the Crab Nebula.
This composite image uses data from three of NASA's Great Observatories.
The Chandra X-ray image is shown in light blue, the Hubble Space Telescope
optical images are in green and dark blue, and the Spitzer Space
Telescope's infrared image is in red. The size of the X-ray image is
smaller than the others because ultrahigh-energy X-ray emitting electrons
radiate away their energy more quickly than the lower-energy electrons
emitting optical and infrared light. The neutron star, which has the mass
equivalent to the sun crammed into a rapidly spinning ball of neutrons
twelve miles across, is the bright white dot in the center of the image.
