A year ago we vacationed in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico for a couple of days. One of our goals was to hike out to the site of a pictograph drawn on a rock overhang that is said to depict the appearance of a supernova that occurred in 1054 A.D. The artist was part of the Anasazi group of people who populated this canyon during that time, and much archaeoastronomical debate centers on just what it meant for the artist to paint the scene.

It must have been an eerie sight when the explosion flared into view over the eastern horizon early on July 4, 1054 A.D. Perhaps it had some ritual meaning to the Anasazi. Or maybe it was just their way of recording a strange thing in the sky. We’ll never know, but that doesn’t stop learned astronomers and ethnographic types from tussling over what the rock record means. One thing’s for sure, the presence of a bright “guest” star must have been a surprise to ancient stargazers who knew the skies quite well. Certainly the Chinese and Japanese thought it so remarkable that they recorded it in their writings, and there’s even evidence that people living on Guam noticed this outburst and drew pictures of it on cave walls. But, apparently, few in Europe saw fit to record this apparition, although it would have been quite bright in their skies.

Can we see the supernova today? Well, yes, sort of. It has faded quite a bit from the glory days of 1054 A.D. when it rivaled the full moon for brightness. To see it with any detail you need a medium-to-large backyard-type telescope and maybe even a filter or two. It’s definitely not a binocular object but if you want to just see where the Crab lies, look toward the horns of Taurus the Bull after they rise up out of the horizon clutter on these November nights. The southern horn of the Bull extends out to a star called Zeta Tauri. The Crab lies just above that star.

Of course, observatory scopes are really good at digging into the heart of the Crab and showing us the spectacular details of this explosion. Here are two of my favorites: the first is from the European Southern Observatory and the second is a combined Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory image:

I often wonder what the ancient Chinese, Japanese, and Anasazi peoples would think if they only knew just what it was they were recording on their parchments and sandstone? For them, this sight was a mysterious one — another symbol of something in the sky that they didn’t understand. But they surely appreciated the beauty of the apparition — just as today we look at it and try to comprehend the stellar forces at play in the death of a supermassive star.