Chandra looks back at the Crab Nebula
Link here. It is almost twenty years since the Chandra X-Ray Observatory was launched, and in celebration the science team have released another X-ray image of the Crab Nebula, taken in 2017 in league with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope and an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. They have also provided links to all similar past images, going back to 1999.
Some of the images are actually videos, in 2002 and 2011, showing the Crab’s dynamic nature. You can actually see flares and waves of radiation rippling out from its center.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Link here. It is almost twenty years since the Chandra X-Ray Observatory was launched, and in celebration the science team have released another X-ray image of the Crab Nebula, taken in 2017 in league with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope and an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. They have also provided links to all similar past images, going back to 1999.
Some of the images are actually videos, in 2002 and 2011, showing the Crab’s dynamic nature. You can actually see flares and waves of radiation rippling out from its center.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Beautiful picture, the combination of the different wavelengths of light give us a more complete understanding of how different stars work.
The illustration shows that they believe the Jets do not emanate from the rotational center. Perhaps Local Fluff can weigh in and give his thoughts on whether the bent jet is because the star is moving, or the void in The energy cloud could be caused by local fluff pressure blowing and moving the energy away from the star?
@Max
I’m not a real astronomer! I just copy what some of them say. Misunderstandings and selectivity is my value add proposition.
The local fluff (30 light years) is a puff of gas and stuff ejected by active young stars in the Scorpius–Centaurus Association (400 light years) surrounding the Sun in the local bubble is much smaller than the distance to the Crab Nebula (7000 light years).
I would guess that the bending of the jet stream in that fantastic imaging of a real neutron star (such an extreme object, such an extreme form of matter!) is not caused by gravity. Rather by precession of the rotational axis of the neutron star out of which poles the jets are streaming, or radically changing magnetic fields. Neutron stars can have hard enough magnetic fields that chemistry ceases to exist in its vicinity. When all the electrons’ orbits around the atom nuclei follow parallel force field lines, no chemical interaction is possible (I think). Whatever is local to it, is not similar to the harmless gas fluff around our garden here in the Sun.
Neutron stars are more interesting than black holes, because they exist in our universe and can be observed. They consist of real matter, and they are so weird. Like, you see both poles at the same time because the spacetime of its surface is so curved. A geometrical challenge for map projection geographers.
Or the jet’s redirection is maybe caused by a moving very angry “sun spot” on the neutron star without changing its rotational axis (which I imagine would require alot of external energy). The jet might be like a super sun spot active region on the surface of the neutron star. Created by forces in its so called “strange star” kernel (named after the strange quark, as in a quark star, not because it is strange because it already was very strange anyways) that might exist in its relativistic quantum mechanic innerness near the spacetime horizon. It has been suggested that some neutron stars exist only thanks to their high rotational speed. As they slow down they collapse to black holes because the decaying centrifugal force (due to magnetic field interactions) one day doesn’t keep it above the limit of total mass collapse, and the magician suddenly disappears.
It’s a wizard’s hat.
(nec divinos petasum)