In a Heartbeat
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Oil, Phosphorescence & Rare Earth Elements Painting
24" x 36"​
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You are looking at one painting. The top image is how you would enjoy it during the day. However it absorbs light through the day, so in the evening it will illuminate as shown in the bottom photograph. Cool? Cool!
At the center of the Crab Nebula, located in the constellation Taurus, lies a celestial "beating heart" that is an example of extreme physics in space. The tiny object blasts out blistering pulses of radiation 30 times a second with unbelievable clock-like precision.
The Crab Nebula, the result of a bright supernova explosion seen by Chinese and other astronomers in the year 1054, is some 6,500 light-years from Earth. The nebula's intricate shape is caused by a complex interplay of the pulsar, a fast-moving wind of particles coming from the pulsar, and material originally ejected by the supernova explosion and by the star itself before the explosion.