Astronomers created this composite image of the Crab Nebula — a 10-light-year-wide remnant of a supernova explosion — by combining data from five different telescopes: the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope, NASA’s Chandra and Spitzer observatories.
This composite image of the Crab Nebula was assembled by combining data from five telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum: the VLA (radio) in red; Spitzer (infrared) in yellow; Hubble (visible) in green; XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue; and Chandra (X-ray) in purple. Image credit: NASA / ESA / NRAO / AUI / NSF / G. Dubner, University of Buenos Aires.
The Crab Nebula, also known as Messier 1, NGC 1952 and Taurus A, is the result of a bright supernova explosion seen by Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Native American stargazers in 1054 CE.
Bright enough to be visible in amateur telescopes, this object lies 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus.
It was first identified in 1731 by the English astronomer, doctor and electrical researcher John Bevis.
In 1758, while searching for a comet, the French astronomer Charles Messier rediscovered the hazy nebula. He later added the object to his celestial catalog as Messier 1, marking it as a ‘fake comet.’
The nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844.
At its center is a very exotic object known as a neutron star, rotating once every 33 milliseconds, shooting out rotating lighthouse-like beams of radio waves and light — a pulsar (PSR B0531+21).
The nebula’s intricate shape is caused by a complex interplay of PSR B0531+21, a fast-moving wind of particles coming from it, and material originally ejected by the supernova explosion and by the star itself before the explosion.
The VLA, Hubble, and Chandra observations all were made at nearly the same time in November 2012.
Dr. Gloria Dubner of IAFE, the National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET), and the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and her colleagues from Argentina, the United States, South Africa, Canada and Spain, then made a detailed analysis of the newly-revealed details in a quest to gain new insights into the complex physics of the nebula.
New details from the study, published in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint) show interactions between fast-moving particles and magnetic fields similar to structures seen on the Sun, other features seen to appear at multiple wavelengths, and structures that may indicate features near the star before it exploded.
Two separate jets of material from near the pulsar appear in the X-ray and the radio images.
“Comparing these new images, made at different wavelengths, is providing us with a wealth of new detail about the Crab Nebula,” Dr. Dubner said.
“Though the nebula has been studied extensively for years, we still have much to learn about it.”
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G. Dubner et al. 2017. Morphological properties of the Crab Nebula: a detailed multiwavelength study based on new VLA, HST, Chandra and XMM-Newton images. ApJ 840, 82; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6983
