Saturday 27 December 2008

Staggering!

I love the Astronomy Picture of the Day website - indeed I thoroughly recommend typing in a random past date and scrolling forwards with the "tomorrow's picture" button for hours - but today's picture was absolutely mind-blowing!



I mentioned a while ago that, like sound, light (or, rather, the electromagnetic spectrum) works in many more wavelengths than our eyes can see - and this is what X-rays show of the Crab Nebula. 954 years after Chinese and possibly Native American observers saw the star explode, the force of the spinning pulsar creates jets and accelerates charged particles in a glowing cosmic wind 9 light years across. This was an impulse post, not a planned one, so I'm not going to go into X-rays for the time being - but I did want to show you the Chandra observatory's Crab Nebula photo gallery. Excuse me while I go and have a browse.

3 comments:

Georgia said...

Hey Alice--why didn't you tell me you had your blog up and running? ;-) Very nice! I'll be stopping by frequently. Happy New Year!
Georgia

Alice said...

Wow, sorry Georgia, I must have forgotten to send you the link! Doh! Glad you like it - hope you find it entertaining, and thanks very much for the comment. And indeed for finding it.

Look forward to seeing you here and at the zoo.

Anonymous said...

That X ray image is just amazing - thanks for highlighting it Alice. Haven't had chance to browse for a day or two ( :0 ) so I would never have found it otherwise. Off to have a closer look.....
Jules