Scientists crack open the Crab Nebula in gorgeous new photo

Astronomers released a dramatic, highly detailed image Wednesday of the Crab Nebula by combining data from five different telescopes.

The Crab Nebula, the result of a bright supernova explosion seen by Chinese and other astronomers in the year 1054, is some 6,500 light-years from Earth.

At its center is a superdense neutron star as big as the sun that rotates 30 times a second and shoots out rotating lighthouse-like beams of radio waves and light.

The five telescopes that produced the image are the Very Large Array, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, the XMM-Newton Observatory and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

“These new images are providing us with a wealth of new detail about the Crab Nebula," said Gloria Dubner of the Institute of Astronomy and Physics. "Though the Crab has been studied extensively for years, we still have much to learn about it."