#crab nebula

[random-colorpicked-pride-flags]

Pride Flags Colorpicked from Nebulas

[spacewonder19]

M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab ©

[humanoidhistory]

From Asimov on Astronomy, 1976.

[thefirststarr]

What powers the Crab Nebula? A city-sized magnetized neutron star spinning around 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the center of the nebula's core. About 10 light-years across, the spectacular picture of the Crab Nebula (M1) frames a swirling central disk and complex filaments of surrounding and expanding glowing gas. The picture combines visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope in red and blue with X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shown in white, and X-ray emission detected by Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) in purple. The central pulsar powers the Crab Nebula's emission and expansion by slightly slowing its spin rate, which drives out a wind of energetic electrons.

Image Copyright & Credit: NASA, ESA, ASI, Hubble, Chandra, IXPE

[deep-space-netwerk]

Y'all, I'm getting emotional.

One of my absolute favorite astronomical bodies is the Crab Nebula, or Messier 1. The Crab Nebula is a "planetary nebula", which means it's the enormous, beautiful corpse of a once-giant star. The star that formed the Crab Nebula went supernova and exploded in 1054, and was so bright at the time of its death that you could see it from Earth during the day - for almost a month. For that month, it was brighter than every single thing in the sky except the moon and the sun. Some of you have probably heard of it, or have at least seen this Hubble picture:

But how many of y'all have zoomed in?

Inside all of those lovely rainbow clouds is the supernova remnant - a neutron star. A neutron star is made of the densest possible material that we know of - any denser, and it'd collapse the rest of the way into a full-fledged black hole. Neutron stars are so unimaginably dense that they're not even made of an element, not really. The star at the center of the Crab Nebula is one, single atomic nucleus 12 miles in diameter, made entirely of close-packed neutrons. One teaspoon would weigh 10 million tons. Imagine taking a passenger jet, condensing it down to the size of a mote of dust, and then filling a spoon with that dust. And it spins too - 30 times a second. That spinning causes huge jets of material to eject from the poles at half the speed of light. The incredibly powerful magnetic field traps any stray particles and accelerates them in circular paths through the nebula. Just LOOK at this shit! See the ghosty shadows of the jets, stretching from the top left corner to the bottom right?

But what's really making me lose it is this Hubble timelapse. The star is making ripples. Its moving. Its been dead for almost a thousand years, but its still putting on its final, spectacular show.

It never ceases to amaze me that the things we call "dead" stars are some of the most dynamic, energetic, and awe-inspiring objects in the universe. Normal stars are downright STAGNANT compared to what these so-called "stellar remnants" get up to. Maybe we shouldn't be thinking of them as dead stars, but as the next phase in a star's life. Just as caterpillars "end" their mundane lives and metamorphose into something new and strange and capable of flight, these stars destroy themselves to leave behind something far more exotic, playing at the edge of the laws of physics in ways we still don't fully understand.

[abyssal-debonair]

Crab Nebula as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (30 October 2023)

[quiltofstars]

The Crab Nebula, M1 // Ivaylo Stoynov

[lackaspace]

Messier 1, Also known as the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image Credits go to NASA/ESA)

[krakenmare]

High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAO)-2/Einstein Observatory: X-ray image of the Crab Nebula (January 1, 1979)

[livingforstars]

The High Energy Crab Nebula - September 9th, 1996.

"This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula is so energetic that it glows in every kind of light known. Shown above are images of the Crab Nebula from visible light to the X-ray band. NUV stands for "near ultraviolet" light, FUV means "far ultraviolet" light, and VIS means visible light. In the center of the Crab Nebula lies the powerful Crab pulsar - a spinning neutron star with mass comparable to our Sun but with the diameter of only a small town. The pulsar expels particles and radiation in a beam that sweeps past the Earth 30 times a second. The supernova that created the Crab Nebula was seen by ancient Chinese astronomers and possibly even the Anasazi Indians - in 1054 AD, perhaps glowing for a week as bright as the full Moon. The Crab still presents mysteries today as the total mass of the nebula and pulsar appears much less than the mass of the original pre-supernova star!"

[cosmic-perspective]

M1 the Crab Nebula. A supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula 6,500 ly away sitting on the tip top of the left horn of Taurus the Bull. Had difficulty editing this one and not sure if I'm fully happy with it, but it'll do because I'm tired.

[hiyutekivigil]

crab nebula by james webb (nircam, miri)

[kimlion13]

Crab Nebula, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) & MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument)

Published by NASA 10/30/23

[chibinotan]

Crab Nebula

[zurich-snows]

Meiser 1 | Vintage Photo Gravure (1959). Better known as the Crab Nebula, Charles Messier originally mistook Messier 1 for Halley’s Comet, which inspired him to create his famous Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d'Etoiles.

In 1054, Chinese astronomers took notice of a “guest star” that was, for nearly a month, visible in the daytime sky. The “guest star" they observed was actually a supernova explosion, which gave rise to the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide remnant of the violent event. The glowing relic has been expanding since the star exploded, and it is now approximately 11 light-years in width.

References to the star’s supernova explosion are also found in a later (13th-century) Japanese document, and in a document from the Islamic world. Furthermore, there are a number of proposed references from European sources recorded in the 15th century, as well as a pictograph associated with the Ancestral Puebloan culture found near the Peñasco Blanco site in New Mexico, United States. The pyramids at Cahokia in the midwestern United States may have been built in response to the supernova’s appearance in the sky.

Link to view additional info and far more spectacular Hubble images of the glowing relic, including the nebula’s beating heart: the rapidly spinning pulsar at its core: 

[cosmonautroger]

Crab Nebula