Time-Lapse Movies of Crab Nebula

[blike]

Thought this was interesting:

 

"In the movie, bright wispy structures can be seen moving outward at half the speed of light to form an expanding ring, visible in both X-ray and optical images. These wisps appear to originate from a shock wave that shows up as an inner X-ray ring. Dozen of knots in the ring brighten and fade. They jitter around and occasionally undergo outbursts that give rise to expanding clouds of particles.

 

 

"These data leave little doubt that the inner X-ray ring is the location of a shock wave that turns the high-speed wind from the pulsar into extremely energetic particles," said Koji Mori of Penn State University, a coauthor of the paper.

 

Another dramatic feature of the movie is a turbulent jet that lies perpendicular to the inner and outer rings. Violent internal motions are obvious. "The jet looks like steam from a high-pressure boiler," said David Burrows of Penn State, another coauthor of the paper, "except when you realize you are looking at a stream of matter and anti-matter electrons moving at half the speed of light!" "

 

 

Quicktime Version MPEG Version AVI Version

 

This movie shows dynamic rings, wisps and jets of matter and antimatter around the pulsar in the Crab Nebula as observed in X-ray light by Chandra (left, blue) and optical light by Hubble (right, red).

 

News Story: Here

[aman]

Thanks Blike. I imagine the incredible magnetic fields created by the neutron star are what gives the system its shape snd funnels the particles out of one of its poles. I want to go see it close up. I was suprised the star was that small.

Just aman

[Guy34life]

i saw that one ages ago. i think it was at astronomy.com

[Sayonara]

What sort of time frame are we looking at here?