M1 - The Crab Nebula

The Crab Nebula (M1 or NGC 1952) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The nebula is the remnant of a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054 A.D. that was visible during the daytime. The nebula lies in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, at a distance of about 6,500 light years from Earth. It has a diameter of 11 light years, corresponding to an apparent diameter of about 7 arcminutes as seen from Earth, and is expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometers per second (930 mi/s), or 0.5% of the speed of light. At an apparent magnitude of 8.4, it is not visible to the naked eye but can be detected with a good telescope under reasonably dark skies.

This image was cropped from a test image taken using my new QHY247C camera that I'm beta testing. This is the average of nine ten-minute frames, stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop. The camera was attached to my Celestron Deluxe CPC Edge HD.

This has always been a challenging target and previous attempts to obtain something I was happy with always failed. While this consists of fewer frames than I might like, the result was good enough that it's worth posting a fully processed image, especially given I might not get much more time on this target this year.


Astrometry Details

Image Center: View full size annotated image.
   Right Ascension: 5h 34m 32.056s (83° 38m 0.836s)
   Declination: +22° 0m 56.343s
Orientation: Up is 3.1 degrees West of North.
Image Size: 18.282' x 13.262' Pixel Scale: 0.288"


Identified Objects

Comments

Add a comment

No comments yet. Be the first to comment!

  •  
Thanks for visiting our site. Please show your support by visiting our advertisers.

Donations Welcome!

Image Location

Photo Info

Popular tags

  • 41 photos are tagged with Messier

Tag Albums

View more information