Hubble Revisits Crab Nebula, Tracks 25 Years of Growth

NASA's iconic telescope captures detailed changes in the supernova remnant over a quarter-century.

Mar. 24, 2026 at 1:38am

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken a fresh look at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years from Earth. The new 2024 image, paired with Hubble's past observations and data from other telescopes, allows astronomers to study how the nebula has expanded and evolved over the past 25 years.

Why it matters

The Crab Nebula is the aftermath of a supernova explosion that was observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054 AD. Hubble's long-term monitoring of the nebula provides a unique opportunity to study the detailed changes in a supernova remnant over decades, shedding light on the complex physics driving its expansion.

The details

Hubble's new 2024 image captures the nebula's intricate filamentary structure and the considerable outward movement of those filaments at a pace of 3.4 million miles per hour. The filaments around the periphery appear to have moved more compared to those in the center, due to the nature of the Crab as a pulsar wind nebula powered by synchrotron radiation. The higher-resolution Hubble observations also provide insights into the 3D structure of the nebula, with shadows of some filaments cast onto the haze of synchrotron radiation in the interior.

  • The Crab Nebula was first observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054 AD.
  • Hubble began observing the full Crab Nebula in 1999.
  • Hubble captured a new image of the Crab Nebula in 2024, 25 years after its initial observations.

The players

Hubble Space Telescope

NASA's iconic space observatory that has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make groundbreaking discoveries about the universe.

William Blair

An astronomer at Johns Hopkins University who led the new observations of the Crab Nebula with Hubble.

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What they’re saying

“We tend to think of the sky as being unchanging, immutable. However, with the longevity of the Hubble Space Telescope, even an object like the Crab Nebula is revealed to be in motion, still expanding from the explosion nearly a millennium ago.”

— William Blair, Astronomer

“Even though I've worked with Hubble quite a bit, I was still struck by the amount of detailed structure we can see and the increased resolution with the Wide Field Camera 3, as compared to 25 years ago.”

— William Blair, Astronomer

What’s next

The new, higher-resolution Hubble observations can be paired with recent data from other telescopes, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, to put together a more complete picture of the Crab Nebula's continuing aftermath centuries after the original supernova.

The takeaway

Hubble's long-term monitoring of the Crab Nebula demonstrates the power of sustained observations to reveal the dynamic nature of cosmic objects, even those that appear static. These insights into the expansion and evolution of supernova remnants advance our understanding of the violent processes that shape the universe.