Posted on 05/11/2011 9:03:57 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The Crab Nebula has shocked astronomers by emitting an unprecedented blast of gamma rays, the highest-energy light in the Universe.
The cause of the 12 April gamma-ray flare, described at the Third Fermi Symposium in Rome, is a total mystery.
It seems to have come from a small area of the famous nebula, which is the wreckage from an exploded star.
The object has long been considered a steady source of light, but the Fermi telescope hints at greater activity.
The gamma-ray emission lasted for some six days, hitting levels 30 times higher than normal and varying at times from hour to hour.
While the sky abounds with light across all parts of the spectrum, Nasa's Fermi space observatory is designed to measure only the most energetic light: gamma rays.
These emanate from the Universe's most extreme environments and violent processes.
The Crab Nebula is composed mainly of the remnant of a supernova, which was seen on Earth to rip itself apart in the year 1054.
At the heart of the brilliantly coloured gas cloud we can see in visible light, there is a pulsar - a rapidly spinning neutron star that emits radio waves which sweep past the Earth 30 times per second. But so far none of the nebula's known components can explain the signal Fermi sees, said Roger Blandford, director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, US.
"The origin of these high-energy gamma rays has to be some other source," he told BBC News.
"It takes about six years for light to cross the nebula, so it must be a very compact region in comparison to the size of the nebula that's producing these outbursts on the time scales of hours."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Nice picture! What size telescope did you use and is the color in the picture natural or “enhanced”?
Equatorial mounted 10” SCT. Colors are basically what the camera saw with CLS filters in the optical train.
This will explain colors further.
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/COLOR.HTM
Lot’s of this going around lately; there was thread about one in a galaxy some 3.5-4.0 billion light years away, in Draco a month or so ago.
A friend of mine has an app on his phone with a celestial atlas that shows stars and constellations in whatever direction you point the phone (as if taking a picture). Very neat (and works in the daytime too! ;-)). It uses GPS and g-force (tilt sensor) data to calculate the coordinates and display the information.
I saw that one.
hmm.. maybe the universe just is going thru a long cycle of chaos and all we can do is kick back and dodge the cosmic bullets.... getting hit direct by a GRB is a one in a quintaamillion shot,, buttt.. considering some unexplainable acts of nature,, they may occur more oft then we like to admit.
lucky we’re not getting our eyebrows singed more..
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