                        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.

                                2023 March 20

                        M1: The Expanding Crab Nebula
                  Video Credit & Copyright: Detlef Hartmann

   Explanation: Are your eyes good enough to see the Crab Nebula expand?
   The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first on Charles Messier's
   famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now
   known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the
   explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of the Crab was
   witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. Roughly 10 light-years
   across today, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of over 1,000
   kilometers per second. Over the past decade, its expansion has been
   documented in this stunning time-lapse movie. In each year from 2008 to
   2022, an image was produced with the same telescope and camera from a
   remote observatory in Austria. The sharp, processed frames even reveal
   the dynamic energetic emission surrounding the rapidly spinning pulsar
   at the center. The Crab Nebula lies about 6,500 light-years away toward
   the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).

                     Tomorrow's picture: beautiful dust
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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