Where it is:<\/strong> 6,500 light-years away, in the constellation Taurus<\/p>\n When it was shared:<\/strong> March 23, 2026<\/p>\n The Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>‘s surprising longevity is giving astronomers a chance to see not only what distant objects look like up close but also how they change over time.<\/p>\n This week, NASA<\/a> dropped a stunning example: A comparison of two Hubble images from 1999\/2000<\/a> and 2024<\/a> shows how the Crab Nebula \u2014 the remains of an exploded star \u2014 has expanded and evolved over a quarter century of Hubble images.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are few more iconic objects in the night sky than the Crab Nebula, a cosmic cloud that links ancient astronomy with modern space telescopes. In the year 1054, a supernova in the constellation Taurus lit up the daytime sky<\/a> for several weeks \u2014 an event recorded by early astronomers in Japan, China<\/a> and the Middle East. This “guest star” eventually faded from view but it remains one of the best-documented cosmic explosions in human history.<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Centuries later, in the mid-18th century, the Crab Nebula was discovered in the constellation Taurus. Astronomers, including Edwin Hubble in the 1950s, linked the Crab Nebula to the 1054 supernova. The smoking gun was the discovery of a pulsar \u2014 a rapidly rotating neutron star, the typical leftovers of a supernova \u2014 at the center of the Crab Nebula.<\/p>\n \n The newest image of the Crab Nebula from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, W. Blair (JHU). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)))<\/p>\n That pulsar has been busy powering the nebula’s expansion in the 25 years since it was first photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>. The telescope’s latest observations of the Crab Nebula, published earlier this year in The Astrophysical Journal<\/a>, have allowed astronomers to measure the outward movement of the nebula’s intricate filaments.<\/p>\n The differences between the two images<\/a> may seem slight, but the filaments are expanding at about 3.4 million mph (5.5 million km\/h). The expansion is driven not by shock waves from the initial explosion \u2014 as many supernova remnants are<\/a> \u2014 but by the pulsar, whose powerful magnetic field<\/a> propels charged particles outward. This energy source drives the nebula’s expansion and illuminates its glowing filaments.<\/p>\n \n The 1999\/2000 Hubble image shows the Crab Nebula smaller than it appeared in 2024 (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI,)<\/p>\n The images, which make use of Hubble’s high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3 (installed by astronauts in 2009), allow scientists to see 3D structures and details, with blue regions indicating the hottest, lowest-density gas and yellow and red tones revealing energized sulfur and oxygen. (The 1999\/2000 photo has also been reprocessed to match the resolution of Wide Field Camera 3.)<\/p>\n “We tend to think of the sky as being unchanging, immutable,” William Blair<\/a>, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University who led the new observations, said in a NASA statement<\/a>. “However, with the longevity of the Hubble Space Telescope, even an object like the Crab Nebula is revealed to be in motion, still expanding from the explosion nearly a millennium ago.”<\/p>\n Hubble is not the only telescope that has managed to snap this spectacular supernova remnant. In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> also captured a staggeringly detailed shot of the Crab Nebula<\/a>, which later helped scientists map out the cosmic dust within its expanding shell, according to NASA<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quick facts What it is: The Crab Nebula (also called M1), a supernova remnant Where it is: 6,500…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-858410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116313021826386956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/M4wcqTuccDwZzAXyP9AY9f.jpg\")
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