Daily Image

11-02-2012
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Near and Far

Submitter: Albert van Duin
Description: The Crab Nebula, also known as M1, NGC 1952 or Taurus A, is a supernova remnant containing a pulsar. The nebula was discovered in 1731 by John Bevis and its distance is about 6,500 light-years (2 kpc), the nebula has a diameter of 11 light-year (3.4 pc) and expands at a rate of about 1,500 kilometers per second.

The creation of the Crab Nebula corresponds to the bright SN 1054 supernova that was independently recorded by Indian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1054 AD. (Wikipedia)

The image is a 200 minute integration (10 x 20 minutes) with a 40cm F/4 telescope, a 8.3 Mpixel CCD cooled to -30°C and a 7nm bandwidh H-Alphafilter on January 16, 2012 from Beilen. Using this filter the structure of the nebula is enhanced and light pollution suppressed. Image scale is 0.7"/pixel. This image was combined using uncalibrated data, resulting in white specks in the image.

On lower left on the image, the trail of asteroid 3724 Annenskij is visible, less than 1 light-hour away.
Copyright: Albert van Duin astropix.nl
 
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