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GREENBELT, Md., July 7 (UPI) -- Hubble recently captured an image of the very center of the Crab Nebula -- revealing the "beating heart" of the cosmos' most photogenic interstellar cloud. At the center of the Crab Nebula lie the ancient remnants of an exploded star, a supernova. The so-called heart does beat. The nebula's supernova core sends out regular shockwave-like pulses of radiation and charged particles.
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The heart is actually a neutron star. Though it's roughly the same mass as our sun, it's extremely small and dense -- a single solar mass packed into a sphere just a few miles across. It shoots out pulses as it spins more than 30 rotations per second.
In the new Hubble image released by NASA, the neutron star -- or pulsing heart -- is the rightmost of the two bright spheres seen in the center. Swirling magnetic fields with charged particles traveling at close to the speed of light can be seen expanding outward from the two stars. All around them are filaments of gas, glowing red from the bombardment of expelled radiation.
More than just a pretty picture, the Crab Nebula's core serves a scientific purpose. Its predictable pulsations, or "lighthouse beacons," work as a barometer for a variety of astronomical experiments.
