A Giant Hubble Mosaic of the Crab Nebula

*Description*: This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. The orange filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula's eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star's rotation. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star. The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope. When viewed by Hubble, as well as by large ground-based telescopes such as the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the Crab Nebula takes on a more detailed appearance that yields clues into the spectacular demise of a star, 6,500 light-years away. The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen. For more information, contact: Jeff Hester, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz., (phone) 480-965-0741, (e-mail) [email protected] Allison Loll, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz., (phone) 480-965-7652, (e-mail) [email protected] Jesper Sollerman, Dark Cosmology Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, (phone) 011-46-8-5537-8554, (e-mail) [email protected] Lars Lindberg Christensen, Hubble European Space Agency Information Center, Garching, Germany, (phone) 011-49-89-3200-6306, (cell phone) 011-49-173-3872-621, (e-mail) [email protected] Ray Villard, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md., (phone) 410-338-45144, (e-mail) [email protected] Technical facts about this news release: About the Object Object Name: Crab Nebula (NGC 1952) Object Description: Supernova Remnant Position (J2000): R.A. 05h 34m 32s Dec. 22° 00' 52" Constellation: Taurus Distance: The distance to NGC 1952 is 6500 light-years (2.0 kpc). Dimensions: The image is 6 arcminutes along the bottom (12 light-years or 3.7 pc). About the Data Data Description: The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposal 8222: J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University), W. Blair and R. Sankrit (Johns Hopkins University), and P.Scowen (Arizona State University). D. de Martin (www.skyfactory.org, Venice, Italy) also helped in the creation of this image. Instrument: WFPC2 Exposure Date(s): October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000 Filters: F502N ([O III]), F631N ([O I]), F673N ([S II]) About the Image Image Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Hester (Arizona State University) Release Date: December 1, 2005 Orientation: A Giant Hubble Mosaic of the Crab Nebula [ http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2005/37/images/a/formats/compass_large_web.jpg ] *News Release Number:*: STScI-2005-37a
NASA Identifier: SPD-HUBBLE-STScI-2005-37a