Nebula · Taurus

Nébuleuse du Crabe

What is left of the explosion of a star observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054.

In the catalogue, the thumbnail for this object is cropped in on its subject, so that it can be seen at card size. This view here is the whole photograph, as I produced it.

It was visible in broad daylight for nearly a month. The cloud, six light-years across, is 6,500 light-years away in Taurus. Charles Messier took it for Halley's Comet, and that mistake gave him the idea for his catalogue. Small and relatively bright, it appears quickly. Its filaments, though, keep sharpening as the exposures pile up.

Source: NASA, catalogue Messier de Hubble, Messier 1. A figure wrong? Report it.

15m 1 shot

0 towards 22h 12m · cumulative integration on this object

Temps d'intégration : the total exposure time, the sum of every exposure stacked on an object.