•

The Famous Crab Nebula

Greetings from Eurania. It is suspected that the Great Nebula of Eurania is the remnant of the cataclysmic explosion of the Euranian star of origin. The supernova bisected the star cluster and…

Greetings from Eurania.

It is suspected that the Great Nebula of Eurania is the remnant of the cataclysmic explosion of the Euranian star of origin. The supernova bisected the star cluster and destroyed the ancient Etolian empire. While no images are known to exist of the Euranian remnant, or the many neutron stars situated within, the famous Crab Nebula, with its pulsar, offers a suggestion of what it might be similar to.

The Crab Nebula (NGC 1952) is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.
ABOUT THIS IMAGE:
This composite image of the Crab Nebula uses data from three of NASA’s Great Observatories. The Chandra X-ray image is shown in light blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical images are in green and dark blue, and the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared image is in red. The size of the X-ray image is smaller than the others because the outwardly streaming higher-energy electrons emitting X-ray light radiate away their energy more quickly than the lower-energy electrons emitting optical and infrared light. The neutron star, which has the mass equivalent to the sun crammed into a rapidly spinning ball of neutrons twelve miles across, is the bright white dot in the center of the image.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, JPL-Caltech, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State Univ.), R. Gehrz (Univ. Minn.), and STScI.

The Crab Pulsar (link)

Multiple observations made over several months with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope captured the spectacle of matter and antimatter propelled to near the speed of light by the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star the size of Manhattan. Combining the power of Chandra and Hubble, the movie reveals features never before seen in still images. By understanding the Crab, astronomers hope to unlock the secrets of how similar objects across the universe are powered.
The inner region of the Crab Nebula around the pulsar was observed with Hubble on 24 occasions between August 2000 and April 2001 at 11-day intervals, and with Chandra on eight occasions between November 2000 and April 2001. The Crab was observed with Chandra’s Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer and Hubble’s Wide-Field Planetary Camera.
Credit: NASA/HST/ASU/J.Hester et al.