The Electric Heart (Crab Nebula)

The heartbeat of a dead star. The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054 AD. Today, it is an expanding cloud of gas powered by a pulsar—a rapidly rotating neutron star—at its center.

Webb's view reveals the 'cage' of the nebula in unprecedented detail. The red-orange filaments are doubly ionized sulfur, creating a crisp, cage-like structure. Inside, the milky, translucent material is synchrotron radiation, emitted by particles accelerating around the pulsar's magnetic field lines. The white dot at the center is the engine of the nebula, a star no wider than a city but containing the mass of the sun. The wisps of radiation ripple outward from this center, driven by the magnetic heartbeat of the pulsar.

Scientific provenance

Editions

• Fine Art — museum-grade pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Metallic. Numbered edition of 50 per size, with a Numbered Certificate of Authenticity.
• Poster — pigment print on archival photo paper. Open edition.
• Framed or unframed — either edition can be framed in a slim black frame with shatter-resistant acrylic glazing, ready to hang (50 × 50 and 50 × 70 cm). Framed works ship free within the EU; unframed prints ship rolled in a protective tube.

Printed to order in our Vilnius studio on an Epson SureColor P20500 with UltraChrome PRO12 pigment inks, and dispatched within 5–7 business days. Each size is composed for its own proportions: we crop, we never stretch, and we never add or generate image content.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University). Licensed under CC BY 4.0; cropped and colour-managed for print. UniverseMuseum is an independent studio and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI or the Rubin Observatory.