Starship Asterisk*

Today's APOD posting of the Crab Nebula made me wonder what a "movie" of it might look like. We have had years of Hubble pictures and pre-Hubble pictures that might be stitched together at regular time intervals to create a "movie view" of the Crab Nebula and how it is changing over the years. Such an exercise might also invite extrapolation backwards to 1054 when it all began. Is there anything like that already out there? A "movie view" might provide better insights into the dynamics of the nebula.

The above phrase, used in the caption for "M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble", needs elaboration. What colors represent what elements? Does a given color always represent the same element in all astronomical photographs? Is there a basic astronomical color reference page? I like the colors; they help me to "see". If, however, they represent each photographer's whim and are subject to random change, then this viewer needs a guiding statement in each photograph for clarification.

Thanks for all help.

Nell wrote:What colors represent what elements?

From the ESA Photo Release - heic0515: Most detailed image of the Crab Nebula - 01-Dec-2005

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 colours in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue indicates neutral oxygen, green singly ionised sulphur and red doubly ionised oxygen. The Hubble data have been superimposed onto images taken with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory, Chile.

This is not even what is termed the Hubble palette. Most false color images from Hubble use red light from hydrogen atoms as green, red light from sulfur ions (sulfur atoms with one electron removed) as red, and green light from doubly-ionized oxygen (oxygen atoms with two electrons missing) as blue.

bluebird wrote:Today's APOD posting of the Crab Nebula made me wonder what a "movie" of it might look like. We have had years of Hubble pictures and pre-Hubble pictures that might be stitched together at regular time intervals to create a "movie view" of the Crab Nebula and how it is changing over the years. Such an exercise might also invite extrapolation backwards to 1054 when it all began. Is there anything like that already out there? A "movie view" might provide better insights into the dynamics of the nebula.

Google is your friend. There are quite a few movies of the Crab Nebula, both of the center region and of the nebula as a whole, including some made with modest amateur equipment.

If we had a movie of the Crab Nebula,
it would start out as a very large star, much like eta Carinae;

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080617.html

Eta Carinae is thought to be 100-150 times more massive than our Sun.
In the above APOD, eta Carinae the star, is in the middle, between the two big white 'puff balls' on the red background, but you can't actually see it as the foreground white cloud obscures it.
Orthogonally (perpendicular) to the long axis thru the white clouds, there's a 'disk' of material that is extending out about 1/2 as far as the white clouds go. Like a dinner plate with two china water pitchers opposite each other, sitting on front and back of the plate. (not a great metaphore, yeah) two really big puffball mushrooms on opposite sides of a salad plate !

The disk of material I'm referencing as the dinner plate, only shows an 11 o'clock and a 4 o'clock spike of material that shows in this photo. You can see a little more of it in a purple color, sort of. The photo's wavelength of sensitivity only shows this much, there's more to see in other frequencies of the EM spectum.

There is an 'energy connection' between the two white clouds, the dinner plate disk, and eta Carinae.
There is an electric double layer close to the star as well.

What happened to the star in the Crab Nebula, that is now the pulsar, is that it's electric double layer 'failed' and exploded during a catastrophic 'short circuit', and that is what caused the 'explosion' and the subsequent Crab Nebula structure. This scenario also accounts for the inexplicable 'mysterious filaments' that standard astrophysics doesn't understand why they formed and are there, and also so tenuous.

Unfortunately, Mainstream Astrophysics is about a hundred years behind the times in understanding; massive stars, supernovas, planetary nebulas, and even our own Sun's heliosphere and heliopause's interaction with the interstellar medium within our galaxy.

bystander wrote:Post by bystander on Sun Oct 25, 2009 2:57 pm
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091025.html

Thanks for the picture,,, Take a good hard look at it.

Remind you of anything?

http://www.woyano.com/view/6161/The-Uni ... Brain-Cell

Hm, so there IS intelligent life in the universe? THE universe itself?

That sparks a thought or two.

Perhaps imagination DOES exceed the speed of light after all.

-Noel

i just had to say that the crab nebula was one of the most spectacular APODS. I almost always down load them but this took my breath away, i will be staring at it for quite awhile and will enjoy it along with all my others on my slide show.

kovil wrote:If we had a movie of the Crab Nebula,
it would start out as a very large star, much like eta Carinae;

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080617.html

Eta Carinae is thought to be 100-150 times more massive than our Sun.
In the above APOD, eta Carinae the star, is in the middle, between the two big white 'puff balls' on the red background, but you can't actually see it as the foreground white cloud obscures it.
Orthogonally (perpendicular) to the long axis thru the white clouds, there's a 'disk' of material that is extending out about 1/2 as far as the white clouds go. Like a dinner plate with two china water pitchers opposite each other, sitting on front and back of the plate. (not a great metaphore, yeah) two really big puffball mushrooms on opposite sides of a salad plate !

The disk of material I'm referencing as the dinner plate, only shows an 11 o'clock and a 4 o'clock spike of material that shows in this photo. You can see a little more of it in a purple color, sort of. The photo's wavelength of sensitivity only shows this much, there's more to see in other frequencies of the EM spectum.

There is an 'energy connection' between the two white clouds, the dinner plate disk, and eta Carinae.
There is an electric double layer close to the star as well.

What happened to the star in the Crab Nebula, that is now the pulsar, is that it's electric double layer 'failed' and exploded during a catastrophic 'short circuit', and that is what caused the 'explosion' and the subsequent Crab Nebula structure. This scenario also accounts for the inexplicable 'mysterious filaments' that standard astrophysics doesn't understand why they formed and are there, and also so tenuous.

Unfortunately, Mainstream Astrophysics is about a hundred years behind the times in understanding; massive stars, supernovas, planetary nebulas, and even our own Sun's heliosphere and heliopause's interaction with the interstellar medium within our galaxy.

You just called all of these cosmic features things like dinner plates, salad plates, china water pitchers, and puff balls. You can't even explain anything without resorting to quotation marks. I'm not a scientist but you don't make a bit of sense.

geckzilla wrote:

kovil wrote:(nonsense snipped)

You just called all of these cosmic features things like dinner plates, salad plates, china water pitchers, and puff balls. You can't even explain anything without resorting to quotation marks. I'm not a scientist but you don't make a bit of sense.

That's because he is completely ignorant about the things he responds to. Maybe if you ignore him he'll go away, to one of the crackpot forums that are made especially for his type.

Where is the M1 neutron star position in this magnificent photo?

Run wrote:Where is the M1 neutron star position in this magnificent photo?

These two pictures of the crab from Chandra might help you locate the neutron star.

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/crab/
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/crab/

The optical portion of the second image corresponds to the Hubble image in the APOD. The xray portion of the second image (the purple in the center) corresponds to the blue crab in the first image. The neutron star is readily visible in the first image. See below for the separate portions of the composite second image.

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/crab/more.html

The Composite Crab is two previous APODs
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050326.html
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061026.html

Nell wrote:The above phrase, used in the caption for "M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble", needs elaboration. What colors represent what elements? Does a given color always represent the same element in all astronomical photographs? Is there a basic astronomical color reference page? I like the colors; they help me to "see". If, however, they represent each photographer's whim and are subject to random change, then this viewer needs a guiding statement in each photograph for clarification.

Thanks for all help.

Wow .. such a precise way of communication .. such simplicity of wonderful idea. Marvellous and rare such thoughts are in the complexities involving who gains control of what and where.