How does the Crab pulsar supply energy to the Crab Nebula?
This nebula is the product of a supernova explosion; in this section, the blast wave has encountered an area of dense interstellar gas, creating turbulence in the wave and causing it to glow. The picture is a composite of three images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Crab pulsar, located at the center of the Crab Nebula, supplies the energy that allows the nebula to glow by continuously losing its own rotational energy.12
As the pulsar rotates, it gradually slows down, and this loss of rotational energy is transferred to the nebula. This process provides the necessary power to account for the nebula's nonthermal, or synchrotron, emission, which spans the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays. The rate at which the pulsar loses energy is approximately equal to the rate at which the nebula loses energy, confirming that the pulsar acts as the primary engine sustaining the nebula's luminosity.32