RASC - St. John's Centre
Members Photos

A photo of  the "Crab Nebula" (M1), in Taurus, photographed from St. John's  on November 13, 2010 by Chris Stevenson.

The Crab Nebula (Messier 1) in Taurus the Bull, 6000ly distant. Sum of 39 30-second exposures made with an unmodified Canon T2i (550D) dSLR on a Celestron CPC 1100 11" SCT, from East-End St. John's on Nov 13, 2010.  Though the optics were critically-focused, the "seeing" this evening was attrocious (>4 arcsec). Most of the ghostly light visible is synchrotron radiation from electrons accelerated to relativistic speeds when this Type I supernova remnant's progenitor star exploded in 1054 A.D., with wisps of red H-alpha also present. Hints of the central pulsar, surrounding ring (here turned on its side) and polar jets (extending to upper-right and lower-left, resp) warped into a lazy-S are evident.

For an X-ray view courtesy CHANDRA having the same orientation, see http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/1999/0052/

Registax5 used to sum camera JPGs (RAW will be shot next time), The Gimp used to adjust levels and crop/scale.

Click image for full original photo.