                        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.

                                2022 March 4

                          The Multiwavelength Crab
   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 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.

                   Tomorrow's picture: from somewhere else
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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