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M1 • Brain Stem of the Crab Nebula (HOO), Douglas J Struble

M1 • Brain Stem of the Crab Nebula (HOO)

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M1 • Brain Stem of the Crab Nebula (HOO), Douglas J Struble

M1 • Brain Stem of the Crab Nebula (HOO)

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Winter has been rough as usual here in Michigan and I am happy to be finally be finishing something. This is a pretty common bright object captured a lot, but for some reason never approached it myself. There is a tail of OIII coming off M1 that is really not picked up with broadband, which I found intriguing and decided to capture this in HOO with RGB stars. I really tried to pile on the integration time of OIII to pull it out as best as possible, so the end result of the overall image is rather OIII heavy. I drizzled the data, so you will notice my image scale half of my normal pixel scale of 0.68"/pixel.

The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1840 using a 36-inch telescope and produced a drawing that looked somewhat like a crab. The nebula was discovered by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731, and it corresponds with a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified that corresponds with a historical supernova explosion.

At the center of the nebula lies the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star 28–30 kilometres (17–19 mi) across with a spin rate of 30.2 times per second, which emits pulses of radiation from gamma rays to radio waves. At X-ray and gamma ray energies above 30 keV, the Crab Nebula is generally the brightest persistent gamma-ray source in the sky, with measured flux extending to above 10 TeV.

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    M1 • Brain Stem of the Crab Nebula (HOO), Douglas J Struble
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  • M1 • Brain Stem of the Crab Nebula (HOO), Douglas J Struble
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Description: 2022 January's issue of Astronomy Magazine

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M1 • Brain Stem of the Crab Nebula (HOO), Douglas J Struble