The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star. The neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star's rotation. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the centre of the nebula, only barely visible in this Hubble image, is the dynamo powering the nebula's eerie interior bluish glow. The filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. Japanese and Chinese astronomers witnessed this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054. The Crab Nebula is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. The new Hubble image of the Crab was assembled from 24 individual exposures taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WPFC2) and is the highest resolution image of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. The Crab Nebula is one of the most intricately structured and highly dynamical objects ever observed. The image is the largest ever taken with Hubble's WFPC2 workhorse camera. The Crab is arguably the single most interesting object, as well as one of the most studied, in all of astronomy. A new Hubble image - among the largest ever produced with the Earth-orbiting observatory - gives the most detailed view so far of the entire Crab Nebula.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |