File:A Whole New View Of The Crab Nebula.jpg
The unstoppable collapse of the Crab’s progenitor star led to the formation of a rapidly rotating neutron star named the Crab Pulsar, which lurks at the heart of the nebula. This object is roughly the same size as Mars’ small moon Phobos, but contains almost one and a half times the mass of the Sun, and whirls around thirty times every second. This causes jets of high-energy radiation to periodically sweep in the direction of Earth, like the spinning beams of a lighthouse, causing the Crab Nebula to appear to pulse at specific wavelengths.
The Crab Nebula is also known as NGC 1952 and Messier 1. The second of these names was assigned by Charles Messier. He initially misclassified the nebula with Halley’s Comet but soon he realised that the object did not move. Hence he decided to call it M1 as the first object of a catalogue of objects that look like comets but are not.ESA/Hubble & NASA.
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)