NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured new images of the striking nebula, revealing never-before-seen details. A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust, usually formed from the remnants of dying or exploding stars. These clouds are also the cradles of new stars, and gas and dust are the building blocks of star formation.

Astronomers estimate that there are tens of thousands of nebulae in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and JWST recently turned its attention to a nearby nebula: the Crab Nebula, located about 6,500 light-years away.

Study of the Crab Nebula is incredibly detailed

On Monday, NASA released a new image of the Crab Nebula that clearly shows the small white dot at its center. This is the heart of the Crab Nebula, called the Crab Pulsar.

About 1,000 years ago, a supermassive star went supernova and exploded, sending its heated contents into space. But the dense core of this star remained intact, and today it is the Crab Pulsar that lives at the center of the nebula.

A pulsar is a rapidly rotating object that, in the case of the Crab Nebula, pumps gaseous material around it; JWST first revealed this in stunning detail; The Hubble Space Telescope failed to show this when it targeted Cancer. Nebula. Cancer in 2005.

JWST discovers new features in the Crab Nebula

Hubble observes space mostly with the type of light we see: visible light. Therefore, Hubble was unable to capture the nebular, ghost-like, thin white lines of charged particles seen recently by JWST, which observed the nebula in infrared light.

These charged particles move around the strong magnetic fields created by the Crab pulsar. They spin at a relativistic speed, that is, slightly less than the speed of light, and emit a strong light called synchrotron radiation, which is sometimes used in X-ray imaging.

The more colorful gas and dust particles you see in the picture are the remains of a dead star. For example, ionized sulfur appears reddish-orange, ionized iron appears blue, and powder appears greenish-yellow.

“Webb’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to precisely determine the composition of the ejecta, including its iron and nickel content,” said NASA’s Thea Temim, who led the team that used JWST’s infrared instruments to image the Crab Nebula.

For the first time in 20 years, Hubble will make a new image of the Crab Nebula available for comparison next year, according to NASA.