Filaments of pink, blue, purple, white, and yellow against a black backdrop dotted with stars.

Observatories Combine to Crack Open the Crab Nebula

This colorful composite image of the Crab Nebula was assembled by combining data from five telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum: the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (radio, in red), the Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared, in yellow), the Hubble Space Telescope (visible, in green), the XMM-Newton Observatory (ultraviolet, in blue), and the Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-ray, in purple).

Credits: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI