![[Crab]](/image_gallery/images/d5/03036b.jpg)
M1, the Crab in Taurus, and its central pulsar
Downloadable versions (see
NOAO Conditions of Use):
These data were taken with the Kitt Peak Photon Counting Array (KPCA)
at the Kitt Peak 4-meter Mayall telescope during the night of 20 October 1989,
using a standard B-band optical filter, and represent a phased accumulation
of almost two hours of observation. The observed period at the
telescope was 33.36702 milliseconds.
Due to poor weather and a long exposure seeing of more than 3.5 arc seconds,
each slice was sharpened by computer image processing before making the mosaic.
The KPCA was capable of millisecond time resolution for both imaging and
spectroscopy, predominantly at blue wavelengths.
The instrument and the pulsar observations are discussed in
P.A.S.P., v104, p263, 1992.
(If you need more details, please contact me.)
Minimum credit line: N.A.Sharp/NOAO/AURA/NSF
(for details see Conditions of Use)
515 x 400 26 kb color JPEG
1318 x 1024 128 kb color JPEG
2646 x 2056 424 kb color JPEG
2646 x 2056 5.3 Mb 8-bit color TIFF
2646 x 2056 15.9 Mb 24-bit color TIFF
This picture shows a time sequence for the pulsar in the Crab nebula,
shown in context against
an image, also taken with the Kitt
Peak 4-meter Mayall telescope.
Both the nebula and its central pulsar
were created by a supernova explosion in the year 1054 A.D.
The enlarged region is a mosaic of 33 time slices, ordered from top
to bottom and from left to right. Each slice represents approximately
one millisecond in the period of the pulsar. The brighter, primary
pulse is visible in the first column: the weaker, broader inter-pulse
can be seen in the second column.
An animated sequence is available
as an MPEG movie (86kb) and
as a flattened QuickTime
movie (1Mb).
Return to:
nebulae page,
emission nebulae page,
stars page.
Comments by e-mail to images@noao.edu
