The Incredible Expanding Crab

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by wet1, Dec 28, 2001.

  1. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    The Incredible Expanding Crab
    Credit: Courtesy Adam Block (KPNO Visitor Program), NOAO, NSF

    The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of the Crab was witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. Roughly 10 light-years across today, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of over 1,000 kilometers per second. Flipping between two images made nearly 30 years apart, this animation clearly demonstrates the expansion. The smaller Crab was recorded as a photographic image made in 1973 using the Kitt Peak National Observatory 4-meter telescope in 1973. The expanded Crab was made this year with the Kitt Peak Visitor Center's 0.4-meter telescope and digital camera. Background stars were used to register the two images.
     
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  3. Brainz0 Registered Senior Member

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    Bloating

    At 10 ly across, I bet the left claw doesn't know what the right claw is doing!

    Though it may know what it was doing, and make a good guess...
     
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  5. esp Registered Senior Member

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    908
    You're never going to believe this, but as I was watching this picture download, I had 2001 on TCM channel and it was the bit with the feotus and the planet and the title theme!
    Talk about spooky.
     
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  7. Brainz0 Registered Senior Member

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    Darkness

    Spooky? foetus? Crab nebula? Sorry, I don't get the connection(s).

    BTW, whose quote is that about "the dark side of the moon"? You do know, don't you, that there is no "dark side", just a far side that we never see? It gets just as much light as the near side (where do you think the sunlight falls during a new moon?) The near side of the moon is slightly heavier, and is now gravitationally locked, facing the Earth.
     
  8. esp Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    908
    I'll See You on the Dark Side of the Moon

    From the track Eclipse from the album Darkside of the Moon by Pink Floyd.

    The song finished with the line
    "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon"
    followed by, almost whispered,
    "there is no dark side of the moon".

    It's got no scientific bearing, it's just my favourite quote from one of the biggest selling albums of all time.

    The feotus thing
    I was watching the image developing while the opening bars of the title track from 2001 was playing on TV. I was stoned, what can I say!
     

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