(CNN) The hauntingly beautiful Crab Nebula, located 6,500 light-years away in the Taurus constellation, is releasing an incredible amount of energy. The nebula is six light-years wide, and it's a growing cloud of debris formed from a supernova explosion. When the star exploded, it formed a neutron star, which is the dense core of a star that is about the size of a city like Chicago. This became a pulsar, or rapidly spinning neutron star, that is now located in the nebula. When these beams of light sweep by Earth, scientists can catalog those pulses and determine whether it's a pulsar.

Source: CNN April 16, 2021 10:29 UTC