The Astronomy Pic o the Day—video of the Crab Nebula

[Jim Mahan]

This is a collection of still images taken over an elapsed time, one frame per year for fourteen years. From the same telescope in Austria. The images have been sharpened and composed into a video of two seconds. If you zoom in by opening full screen, and pay attention closely, you can make out the profile of the force of the ten year old supernova, a massive star shedding it's outer later in an explosion almost a thousand years ago, that is still travelling outward at a thousand kilometers per second, and is now ten light years across. The profile shown faintly near the center of the nebula has a pair of opposed pairs of outbound waves of energy rippling the already emitted dust, visible in the video as ripples, and with one pair having the appearance of axial streaming jets, while the other pair appear to be equatorial and radial to that axis. A ghost trace of forces that mimic the magnetic field lines of our sun and Earth. And subatomic particles.

M1: The Expanding Crab Nebula
Video Credit & Copyright: Detlef Hartmann

Explanation: Are your eyes good enough to see the Crab Nebula expand? The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of the Crab was witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. Roughly 10 light-years across today, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of over 1,000 kilometers per second. Over the past decade, its expansion has been documented in this stunning time-lapse movie. In each year from 2008 to 2022, an image was produced with the same telescope and camera from a remote observatory in Austria. The sharp, processed frames even reveal the dynamic energetic emission surrounding the rapidly spinning pulsar at the center. The Crab Nebula lies about 6,500 light-years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).

[Durnik]

cool.

and trust all know this trick?

"Right-click anywhere on the video to bring up the context menu and click the “Loop” button."

[Jimmy W]

I also clicked on the settings icon and set the speed to 0.25.

[Durnik]

nice, forgot about that.