Peering into the Heart of the Crab Nebula

1. What does the picture reveal to astronomers?

Resembling an abstract painting by Jackson Pollack, the image shows ragged shreds of gas that are expanding away from the explosion site at over 3 million mph. The core of the star has survived the explosion as a "pulsar," visible in the Hubble image as the lower of the two moderately bright stars to the upper left of center. The pulsar is a neutron star that spins on its axis 30 times a second. It heats its surroundings, creating the ghostly diffuse bluish-green glowing gas cloud in its vicinity, including a blue arc just to its right. The colorful network of filaments is the material from the outer layers of the star that was expelled during the explosion.