A coalition of telescopes have allowed astronomers to produce an image of the nebula MSH 15-52 in unprecedented color and detail.

Centered in the middle of the nebula is a pulsar, or the rapidly-spinning, extremely dense remnant of an exploded star. Captured together, some astronomers see in the mixture of the two the image of a hand.

In 2009, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Space Observatory released a captivating image of this pulsar, designated B1509-58, located approximately 17,000 light-years from Earth.

Since then, astronomers have used Chandra and other telescopes to continue to observe this object. Now, new radio data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) has been combined with Chandra’s X-ray data to provide a fresh view of this exploded star and its environment, to help under

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