Astrophotography is a peculiar hobby.

When photographers capture terrestrial objects like people and landscapes, they can see change over very small timescales -- often seconds.  Even a "static" landscape's lighting will dramatically change as the sun carves its path across the sky, causing shadows to shift in mere minutes.

Astrophotography targets are a different breed:  Using the same equipment, a photographer could take a photo of a target when he's 15 years old, and again when he's 95 years old, only to see the same result.  Space is incredibly slow-changing, even across an entire human lifespan (or a million human life spans).

M1, the Crab Nebula, is a rare exception.  You may recall learning in elementary school about how Chinese astronomers discovered a supernova in 1054AD, something they called a "guest star."  Since the explosion happened relatively close to Earth (6,500 light years), over the course of the last 1000 years of human civilization we have been able to see the remnants of the exploded star as they fan out into the cosmos.  Starting as a bright "guest star" in the sky a thousand years ago, the Crab Nebula today is the brilliant supernova remnant seen in the image above.

What's startling is that because the Crab Nebula is expanding at over 900 miles per second, we have actually been able to produce fascinating animations over the last 30 years.  Even amateur astronomers can see expansion over time scales as short as 2-3 years.  See here and here.

This year's rendition is another annual labor of love.  This winter target is always captured through unstable skies and high wind, so I threw away almost 65% of my data.  What was left was very carefully processed in each color channel, then combined in the SHO "Hubble" palette (nebula) and RGB (stars).

Note:  The first version had a greenish tint to the stars that I cannot explain, as I did SPCC after anything that would have changed their color.  The latest version is corrected.  Also, note that I have applied zero saturation or chrominance stretching to this target.