For the first time ever in the history of astronomy and space science:
The Crab Nebula Pulsar, filmed by the Hubble Space Telescape and the Chandra X-ray observatory..
Belive it or not; this above movie is NOT a computer animation, but actual footage of a real pulsar.
It is created by combining visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope with X-ray emitions observed at the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Needless to say: This is the first ever movie of its kind.
The Pulsar is located at a distance of 6000 Light-years from Earth, in the Crab-nebula, Taurus star-constellation.
The disk you see in the film around the star-like object is actually matter (and antimatter) that is being succed towards the star due to its massive gravetational field; not too unlike a black hole.
You can also see that some of the matter has gotten itself into a more or less stable orbit around the Pulsar, which might create planets and planetoids over time.
The star itself is on the size of manhattan (which is very very very very small in cosmic scale), but it has the mass of a SuperGiant!
An extremely compact object with other words, and a potensial candidate for a future black hole...
We know that our ancestors observed the death of this star in 1054 AD, so the Crab-nebula (also known as the Taurus-cloud, or the Taurus-nebula) is actually quite new (tough the light most travel 6000 years before it reaches us. But it is relatively very new in cosmic sence).
The Pulsar you see here is located in the hearth of this nebula, and is actually the remaining core of the star that vent nova.
Who know?
Maybe it will one day be possible to simulate something like this in Celestia.
Stargazer.
Off Topic: The Taurus Crab Nebula Pulsar reveiled!
-
Topic authorStargazer_2098
- Posts: 64
- Joined: 02.05.2002
- With us: 22 years 1 month
- Location: Starship Thor Heyerdahl, continuing voyage
Off Topic: The Taurus Crab Nebula Pulsar reveiled!
"We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready to set sail towards the stars" --- Carl Sagan, Cosmos.
----
Member of the Noctis IV and Orbiter communities;
Visit Noctis
Visit Orbiter
We are ready to set sail towards the stars" --- Carl Sagan, Cosmos.
----
Member of the Noctis IV and Orbiter communities;
Visit Noctis
Visit Orbiter
-
chris
- Site Admin
- Posts: 4211
- Joined: 28.01.2002
- With us: 22 years 4 months
- Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
This movie is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.
It's amazing to see motion from processes operating at such a huge scale. And I find especially striking the resemblance to ripples on the surface of a pond . . . To see the familiar in something so vast and distant gives me an awesome sense of connection with the universe.
--Chris
It's amazing to see motion from processes operating at such a huge scale. And I find especially striking the resemblance to ripples on the surface of a pond . . . To see the familiar in something so vast and distant gives me an awesome sense of connection with the universe.
--Chris
-
erostosthenes
- Posts: 62
- Joined: 16.09.2002
- With us: 21 years 9 months
- Location: Phoenix, Arizona
yeh i work in the dept. with jeff hester as an undergrad at ASU, and i actually got to see this thing come together this past couple months. the ripples are caused by electromagnetic distubances (caused by the high rotation of the pulsar) in the charged particle nebula around the pulsar.
almost forgot: in response to stargazer's suggestion that this is a future candidate for a black hole - this is unlikely unless it somehow gains a lot of mass. not all supernovae leave black holes behind, only those of about 3 solar masses and above i think. otherwise, they leave neutron stars (pulsars in most cases), where the matter has been so compressed that individual protons and electrons are crushed together forming neutrons. now, whether or not you can actually make a neutron this way is debateable. i've tried working out just how this would work in quantum mechanics, and it doesn't look promising. though, i'm not fully educated in quantum topology which seems to be required for this sort of problem. but until someone comes up with a better explanation, this is all we have.
almost forgot: in response to stargazer's suggestion that this is a future candidate for a black hole - this is unlikely unless it somehow gains a lot of mass. not all supernovae leave black holes behind, only those of about 3 solar masses and above i think. otherwise, they leave neutron stars (pulsars in most cases), where the matter has been so compressed that individual protons and electrons are crushed together forming neutrons. now, whether or not you can actually make a neutron this way is debateable. i've tried working out just how this would work in quantum mechanics, and it doesn't look promising. though, i'm not fully educated in quantum topology which seems to be required for this sort of problem. but until someone comes up with a better explanation, this is all we have.