Crab Nebula size and scale context

The Crab Nebula is the expanding supernova remnant created by the stellar explosion recorded in 1054. Its tangled filaments are still being energized from within by the [Crab Pulsar](crab-pulsar), making the system one of astronomy’s clearest laboratories for watching a dead star reshape the space around it. Read its scale context, comparisons, and journey links on the canonical object page.

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Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.

About

Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.

Guides turn parts of that scale into curated essays, while focused views let you explore the same range through specific groups of objects.

Editorial

Solar System Planets From Electron to Atoms Stars To Scale Birth And Death Of Stars Black Holes To Scale

Views

Planets of the Solar System Stars of the Universe Black holes Subatomic scale

Return to Earth hello@scaleofspace.org

Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.

About

Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.

Guides turn parts of that scale into curated essays, while focused views let you explore the same range through specific groups of objects.

Editorial

Solar System Planets From Electron to Atoms Stars To Scale Birth And Death Of Stars Black Holes To Scale

Views

Planets of the Solar System Stars of the Universe Black holes Subatomic scale

Return to Earth hello@scaleofspace.org

Galaxies

Milky Way

The Milky Way is the barred spiral galaxy that contains the Solar System. One circuit of our system around the galaxy takes about 230 million years, so Earth has completed only about twenty galactic years since it formed.

Scale fact100,000 lystellar disk diameter

Object class: Barred spiral galaxy
Composition: ~100–400 billion stars, gas, dust, dark matter
Estimated age: ~13.6 billion years
Host: Local Group

Galaxies

Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda is the nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and the biggest heavyweight in our immediate neighborhood. Hubble measurements show it is already falling toward us, setting up a galaxy collision that should begin in about 4 billion years.

Scale fact152,000 lydiameter

Object class: Barred spiral galaxy
Composition: ~1 trillion stars, gas, dust, dark matter
Estimated age: ~10 billion years
Host: Local Group

Galaxies

IC 1101

IC 1101 is an enormous cluster-central galaxy embedded in Abell 2029. Systems like this grow huge diffuse halos by cannibalizing neighboring galaxies over billions of years, which is why IC 1101 has long been treated as one of the most extreme single galaxies known.

Scale fact~500,000 lydiameter

Object class: Giant elliptical galaxy
Host: Abell 2029
Composition: Stars, hot gas, dark matter