What is the Crab Nebula?

Expanding wreckage of a supernova recorded in AD 1054, with the Crab Pulsar at its centre.

Worth knowing about the Crab Nebula

You see the Crab Nebula as it was about 6,200 years ago.

What it is: The expanding wreckage of a massive star’s supernova, gas still blasting outwards at thousands of km/s, with the Crab Pulsar left at its centre.; How we know: Photographs decades apart show the gas visibly spreading; run the expansion backwards and it starts around AD 1130 — close to 1054, and the gap shows the gas has been speeding up, pushed by the pulsar’s wind.
Its name and its story: Recorded by Chinese, Japanese and Arab astronomers in AD 1054 as a “guest star” visible in daylight for weeks. A Chaco Canyon petroglyph is a debated possible Native American record.

The Crab Nebula — A model, seen from the Earth, with north up.

The numbers

Across	about 11 light-years
Distance from us	about 6,200 light-years
How big it looks	about 6 arcminutes — the full Moon is about 30

We use about 6,200 light-years, from a radio parallax of the pulsar at its centre (Lin et al. 2023). The long-quoted 6,500 is the older 2.0 kiloparsecs.

How anyone knows this

Also worth a look

The Coalsack Nebuladark nebulaNaked eye

The Helix Nebulaplanetary nebula150 mm telescope

The Orion Nebulaemission nebulaNaked eye

The Dumbbell Nebulaplanetary nebulaBinoculars

The Ring Nebulaplanetary nebula150 mm telescope

The Lagoon Nebulaemission nebulaBinoculars

Games it appears in

Which constellation is it in?

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