But it's more than just a pretty object. It has a fascinating story to tell about what happens when massive stars reach the end of their life.
By measuring the expansion that took place between the time of the two photos, it's possible to work back to find how long it took to expand from a single central point. This turns out to be just under 1000 years. And it just so happens that in 1056, Chinese astronomers observed an extremely bright 'guest star' (even visible in daylight for several weeks) in the same location, where there had been no star visible before, and which then faded away again over a two years.
This was the supernova that created the nebula – enormous quantities of light released from the explosion of a massive star as it collapsed in on itself .
This image shows a composite image of the Crab Nebula at various different wavelenths, captured by the Hubble, Chandar and Spitzer space telescopes.
The neutron star can be seen at the centre of the rings, and at the source of a long jet in this X-ray image of the nebula taken by the Chandra X-Ray Telescope.
The x-ray image can also be seen as the blue part of the composite image above.
It contains lots of different elements such as nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur and argon, none of which existed in the early universe (argon was a surprise discovery in the Crab Nebula, announced only a few months ago, by researchers studying data from the Herschel telescope).
The vast majority of the elements that we are know, including metals such as iron and gold, are all created in the vast furnace of massive stars, along with other such as iron and gold.
Catastrophic explosions like the Crab supernova are responsible for scattering these many different elements like seeds all over the universe. New stars, some with planetary systems, form from the debris of the old. And ultimately all these elements are the building blocks for our solar system, our planet, and all the life on this Earth, including humankind. It makes you think, doesn't it!
As physicist Lawrence Krauss memorably put it in his 2009 lecture ' A Universe from Nothing':
'You are all stardust'.
NEXT WEEK: Exoplanets
Different types of supernova http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_sources/supernovas.html
Summary of what is known about the Crab Nebula:http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/observe_nov.htm
Discovery of argon in Crab Nebula http://sci.esa.int/herschel/53332-herschel-spies-active-argon-in-crab-nebula/
Image credits:
1. NASA/ESA/JPL/Arizona State Univ.
2. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/Univ. of Ariz./Univ. of Szeged
3. NASA/CXC/J.Hester (ASU)
4. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Wisconsin