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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
The Crab Nebula Pulsar Shrugs
Explanation: How does a city-sized neutron star power the vast Crab Nebula ? The expulsion of wisps of hot gas at high speeds appears to be at least part of the answer. Yesterday time-lapse movies taken from both the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope were released showing a wisp of gas moving out at about half the speed of light. Wisps like this likely result from tremendous electric voltages created by the central pulsar, a rapidly rotating, magnetized, central neutron star . The hot plasma strikes existing gas, causing it glow in colors across the electromagnetic spectrum . Pictured above is a composite image of the center of the Crab Nebula where red represents radio emission, green represents visible emission, and blue represents X-ray emission. The dot at the very center is the hot pulsar spinning 30 times per second.
| Date | September 20, 2002 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Credit: J. Hester ( ASU ), CXC , HST , NRAO , NSF , NASA |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |