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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

🌌 NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Incredible Expanding Crab

Date: 2001-12-27

The Incredible Expanding Crab

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Explanation:

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. Flipping between two images made nearly 30 years apart, this animation clearly demonstrates the expansion. The smaller Crab was recorded as a photographic image made in 1973 using the Kitt Peak National Observatory 4-meter telescope in 1973. The expanded Crab was made this year with the Kitt Peak Visitor Center's 0.4-meter telescope and digital camera. Background stars were used to register the two images.