Skip to main content

James Webb snaps an image of the famous and beautiful Crab Nebula

Located 6,500 light-years away, the Crab Nebula is famous among astronomers for its elaborate and beautiful structure. A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows off the gorgeous nebula as seen in the infrared wavelength, highlighting the filaments of dust that create its cage-like shape.

The nebula is a supernova remnant, the result of a massive star that exploded at the end of its life centuries ago. The supernova was observed on Earth in 1054 CE, and since then astronomers have watched the nebula that resulted from that explosion grow and change.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula in the search for answers about the supernova remnant’s origins. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have revealed new details in infrared light.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula in the search for answers about the supernova remnant’s origins. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have revealed new details in infrared light. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Tea Temim (Princeton University)

The nebula has previously been imaged by other telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope which looks primarily in the optical wavelength and, more recently, NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer observatory which looks in the X-ray wavelength. These results have been combined into a previous image showing the nebula in optical, infrared, and X-ray.

Recommended Videos

The new Webb image, however, shows different aspects of the object. Using its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) instruments, Webb can see the structures of gas filaments, which are shown in red and orange, as well as the regions of dust that appear as the fluffy yellow, white, and green areas. Another aspect picked up in the infrared image is a type of radiation called synchrotron radiation, created by a rotating neutron star with a strong magnetic field, which is shown as the white milky substance in the interior of the nebula.

The nebula is being studied to learn about how it formed from the supernova event, which threw out clouds of material when the star exploded.

“Webb’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to accurately determine the composition of the ejected material, particularly the content of iron and nickel, which may reveal what type of explosion produced the Crab Nebula,” said lead researcher Tea Temim of Princeton University in a statement.

There will be yet more data about the Crab Nebula coming soon, as Hubble has also recently re-imaged the object for the first time since it took its original observations in 1999 and 2000.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
James Webb captures gorgeous image of a Cosmic Tornado
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light with the NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object (located within our Milky Way) with a more distant, face-on spiral galaxy in the background.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured another stunning image of space, this time showing the dramatic scenes around a baby star. Very young stars can throw off powerful jets of hot gas as they form, and when these jets collide with nearby dust and gas they form striking structures called Herbig-Haro objects.

This new image shows Herbig-Haro 49/50, located nearby to Earth at just 630 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. Scientists have observed this object before, using the Spitzer Space Telescope, and they named the object the "Cosmic Tornado" because of its cone-like shape. To show the impressive powers of James Webb to capture objects like this one in exquisite detail, you can compare the Spitzer image from 2006 and the new James Webb image.

Read more
NASA’s Webb telescope peers straight at Saturn-like planets 130 light-years away
Saturn captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope is NASA's most precise and technically proficient equipment for observing the wonders of the universe. Astronomers rely on it to unravel the deepest secrets by peaking at distant solar systems and capturing planets like those in ours.

Much recently, the Webb Telescope was able to capture its first direct image of exoplanets nearly 130 light-years away from the Earth. The observatory seized images of four "giant" planets in the solar system of a distant star called HR 8799. This is a fairly young system formed roughly 30 million years ago, a timeline that dwarfs in comparison to our solar system's 4.6 billion years of age.

Read more
James Webb captures a stunning view of the dreamy Flame Nebula
Webb's image of the Flame Nebula

Our universe is host to many beautiful and fascinating objects, and we're lucky enough to be able to view many of them using high tech instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope. A new Webb image shows a new view of the gorgeous Flame Nebula, an emission nebula located in the constellation of Orion.

This nebula is a busy stellar nursery, with many new stars being formed there. But it isn't stars which researchers were interested in when they looked to the nebula -- in this case, they were studying objects called brown dwarfs. Bigger than most planets but smaller than a star, brown dwarfs are too small to sustain fusion in their cores, so they are often referred to as failed stars.

Read more