Hubble Space Telescope | Crab Nebula: The Multiwavelength Structure of a Pulsar Wind Nebula @hubblespacetelescope | Uploaded January 2020 | Updated October 2024, 4 hours ago.
This visualization features a three-dimensional multiwavelength representation of the Crab Nebula, a pulsar wind nebula that is the remains of an exploded star. The movie is based on images from NASA’s three Great Observatories: the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes.
The movie begins by showing the Crab Nebula in context, pinpointing the location of the observed supernova in the constellation Taurus. This view zooms in to present the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra images of the Crab Nebula, each highlighting one of the nested structures in the system.
The video then begins a slow buildup of the three-dimensional X-ray structure, showing the pulsar and disk of energized material, and adding jets of particles firing off from opposite sides of the energetic dynamo.
Appearing next is a rotating infrared view of a glowing cloud of emission, called synchrotron radiation, enveloping the pulsar system. This distinctive form of radiation occurs when streams of charged particles spiral around the pulsar’s magnetic field lines.
The visible-light outer shell of the Crab Nebula appears next. Looking like a cage around the entire system, this shell of glowing gas consists of tentacle-shaped filaments of ionized oxygen. The tsunami of particles unleashed by the pulsar is pushing on this expanding debris cloud like an animal rattling its cage.
The X-ray, infrared, and visible-light models are combined at the end of the movie to reveal both a rotating three-dimensional multiwavelength view and the corresponding two-dimensional multiwavelength image of the Crab Nebula.
Credit: NASA, ESA, F. Summers, J. Olmsted, L. Hustak, J. DePasquale, G. Bacon (STScI), N. Wolk (CfA|H&S/CXC), R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC)
Length: 3 minutes 43 seconds
This visualization features a three-dimensional multiwavelength representation of the Crab Nebula, a pulsar wind nebula that is the remains of an exploded star. The movie is based on images from NASA’s three Great Observatories: the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes.
The movie begins by showing the Crab Nebula in context, pinpointing the location of the observed supernova in the constellation Taurus. This view zooms in to present the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra images of the Crab Nebula, each highlighting one of the nested structures in the system.
The video then begins a slow buildup of the three-dimensional X-ray structure, showing the pulsar and disk of energized material, and adding jets of particles firing off from opposite sides of the energetic dynamo.
Appearing next is a rotating infrared view of a glowing cloud of emission, called synchrotron radiation, enveloping the pulsar system. This distinctive form of radiation occurs when streams of charged particles spiral around the pulsar’s magnetic field lines.
The visible-light outer shell of the Crab Nebula appears next. Looking like a cage around the entire system, this shell of glowing gas consists of tentacle-shaped filaments of ionized oxygen. The tsunami of particles unleashed by the pulsar is pushing on this expanding debris cloud like an animal rattling its cage.
The X-ray, infrared, and visible-light models are combined at the end of the movie to reveal both a rotating three-dimensional multiwavelength view and the corresponding two-dimensional multiwavelength image of the Crab Nebula.
Credit: NASA, ESA, F. Summers, J. Olmsted, L. Hustak, J. DePasquale, G. Bacon (STScI), N. Wolk (CfA|H&S/CXC), R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC)
Length: 3 minutes 43 seconds
![The Orion Nebula: Visible and Infrared Views [UltraHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SSCSC5SWoTY/hqdefault.jpg "The Orion Nebula: Visible and Infrared Views [UltraHD]
This sequence uses infrared (Spitzer) and visible (Hubble) images to reveal the formation of stars within a large cloud of hydrogen gas and dust. The warm gas lights up in the infrared view as red, and the hydrocarbon dust appears in green. The starlight from young stars appears in blue. The flood of starlight provides extra illumination throughout the dusty environment and in front of the cloud. The threads of gas, reminiscent of clouds on Earth, are compressed and pushed into knots by the winds from forming stars throughout the region. The clouds appear as shadows in this visible-light view. However, in areas where the gas has mostly been cleared or thinned, glowing cavities can be seen inside these cocoons. The combined view hints at the nebula’s complex three-dimensional structure.
Video: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team (STScI)")
![A Flight Through the CANDELS Ultra Deep Survey Field [Ultra HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SUyDcyHpFhc/hqdefault.jpg "A Flight Through the CANDELS Ultra Deep Survey Field [Ultra HD]
This visualization traverses the CANDELS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS) field to showcase the varied appearances of galaxies and their three-dimensional distribution. The sequence features a dense cluster of galaxies about 6 billion light-years away and extends to galaxies at more than twice that distance. Because the light from these galaxies has travelled for billions of years across space, the images show the galaxies as they appeared billions of years ago. In addition, the expansion of space has redshifted the light of these galaxies toward longer wavelengths (i.e., to the red end of the visible-light region and into the infrared-light region). The changes seen in galaxies during the fly-through illustrate the changes in galaxy structure and appearance over billions of years of cosmic history.
CANDELS is an acronym for the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey project. One of the largest projects ever done with the Hubble Space Telescope, CANDELS surveyed five fields to study the development of galaxies over time. The CANDELS observations of the UDS field complement ground-based observations from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope.
Astronomers and visual artists extracted over 26,000 galaxies from the Hubble UDS images and created a computer model based on the measured and estimated properties. Note that the distances used in the visualization are significantly compressed for cinematic purposes.
Credits: NASA, ESA, F. Summers, J. DePasquale, G. Bacon, and Z. Levay (STScI)
Acknowledgement: H. Ferguson, A. Koekemoer, and the CANDELS Team
Music: Rotisserie Graveyard by Doctor Turtle CC BY 4.0
Download movie files at: http://hubblesite.org/video/984/science")
