Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  Crab nebula  ·  LBN 833  ·  M 1  ·  NGC 1952  ·  Sh2-244
M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past, Wouter Cazaux
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M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past

Revision title: Cropped 50%, but it doesn't make the blast any smaller

M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past, Wouter Cazaux
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M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past

Revision title: Cropped 50%, but it doesn't make the blast any smaller

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Description

20220109 - M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past

What’s in the picture(s) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_Nebula
Quote: “The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. It corresponds with a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054, the first astronomical object identified that corresponds with a historical supernova explosion.
The nebula lies in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, at a distance of about 6,500 ly from Earth. It has a diameter of 11 ly, expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometres per second (930 mi/s), or 0.5% of the speed of light.”

What was the experience
A New Year’s gift: a sudden, unexpected night of clear skies, starting off the year … at the start: M1. The mythical object from my school-books. A star that exploded in the not so distant past, for which we even have a trace in our history books. You could nearly imagine still hearing the echoes of the blast, as if it just happened, the smoke still swirling around

A quick capture to get the basics: HaRGB, just enough integration time to get a decent image. Simple, straight processing, with Ha blended into R, and then used as Luminance. I’ve cropped a second image, for a closer look

Although very similar to the images I remember from my school-books, I was hoping for a little more colour differentiation. It seems I’m missing a touch of green in the heart …

How it was done
Scope: TS140 APO (FL 910mm)
Mount: CEM70G
Camera: ASI2600MM Pro
Photons:
20220109 HaRGB 10x 9x 9x 9x
Darks/Flats/Bias
Processing: PixInsight (Mac)

What have I learned from this
Once privileged only to multiple-meter telescope mirrors, I’m just gazing in wonder to being able to capture this from my backyard, in a light-polluted suburb … How close the stars have come into our reach …
Maybe, I’ll capture SHO in a second pass. Had also expected it a bit sharper, still a lot of noise in the object

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

Follow me @astrowaut (IG)

Comments

Revisions

  • M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past, Wouter Cazaux
    Original
  • Final
    M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past, Wouter Cazaux
    B

B

Title: Cropped 50%, but it doesn't make the blast any smaller

Description: Same image, but cropped 50% (still 3k x 2K resolution), to allow a closer look at the blast

Somehow expecting it to have been sharper and less noisy. Maybe I need to check my PixInsight workflow regarding noise reduction

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

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M1 TAU - The Crab Nebula - Echoes of a blast, from a not so distant past, Wouter Cazaux