Bright nebula in the constellation Taurus, about 5,000 light-years from Earth.
Roughly 12 light-years in diameter, it is the remnant of a supernova , first observed by Chinese and other astronomers in 1054, that was visible in daylight for 23 days and at night for almost two years. Identified as a nebula с 1731, it was named (for its form) in the mid-19th century. In 1921 it was discovered to be still expanding; the present rate is about 700 mi/second (1,100 km/second). The Crab is one of the few astronomical objects from which electromagnetic radiation has been detected over the entire measurable spectrum . In the late 1960s a pulsar, thought to be the collapsed remnant star of the supernova, was found near its centre.