Author: ladyoftheabyss

Astronomy Picture of the Day – The Multiwavelength Crab

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2017 May 11

The Multiwavelength Crab
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.;
A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC;
Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; Hubble/STScI

 

Explanation: The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier’s famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from massive star’s death explosion, witnessed on planet Earth in 1054 AD. This brave new image offers a 21st century view of the Crab Nebula by presenting image data from across the electromagnetic spectrum as wavelengths of visible light. From space, Chandra (X-ray) XMM-Newton (ultraviolet), Hubble (visible), and Spitzer (infrared), data are in purple, blue, green, and yellow hues. From the ground, Very Large Array radio wavelength data is in shown in red. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is the bright spot near picture center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab’s emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

Earth Sky News for May 11: Moon near Antares and Saturn May 11-13

Moon near Antares and Saturn May 11-13

By in TONIGHT

Tonight – May 11, 2017 – and for the next few evenings, watch for the waning gibbous moon, the star Antares and the planet Saturn to rise above your southeast horizon by mid-to-late evening. If they’re not up before your bedtime, you can also look for this celestial threesome – the moon, Antares and Saturn – in the western half of the sky before morning dawn.

Click here for recommended almanacs; they can help you find the rising times of the moon, Antares and Saturn into your sky.

Saturn is nearly at its best and will be closer to the moon on the night of May 12. Read more about Saturn at tomorrow’s night sky post.

Or check out this article on Saturn: Got 5 minutes? Learn to see Saturn

Tonight, focus on ruddy Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. It’s a red supergiant star, whose immense size makes our sun appear puny. Although Antares’s size isn’t known with absolute precision, it’s thought that its radius is better than three times the Earth’s distance from the sun, a distance commonly called the Astronomical Unit (AU).

In other words, if Antares replaced the sun in our solar system, its circumference would extend well beyond the orbit of Mars and roughly 60% the way to Jupiter. Yes, our sun is huge, with the diameter of 109 Earths and the volume of about 1.3 million Earths. Yet Antares’ diameter spans about 650 sun diameters and its volume is somewhere around 275 million suns. Talk about gargantuan!

The name Antares means “like Mars” because of the similarity in color (and sometimes brightness) of Antares and the red planet Mars. In February 2018, Mars and Antares will be in conjunction and at virtually the same brightness, giving you an opportunity to try to distinguish the ruddy star from the red planet in the morning sky.

Bottom line: On the nights of May 11, 12 and 13, 2017, watch for the bright waning gibbous moon to shine near the red star Antares and golden planet Saturn.

 

 

BRUCE MCCLURE

Bruce McClure has served as lead writer for EarthSky’s popular Tonight pages since 2004. He’s a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also writes and hosts public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York.

Article originally published on EarthSky