The Crab Nebula is in the constellation
Taurus. M1 is a supernova remnant and a pulsar wind nebula. The
bright supernova was observed by the Arab, Chinese and Japanese
astronomers in 1054. Even at 6500 light-years from Earth, and a
diameter of 11 light-years this nebula is quite small and dim through
a telescope, but starts to show a little bit of detail once you start
imaging. Within the center of this nebula is the Crab Pulsar which is
a neutron star emitting pulses of radiation from gamma rays to radio
waves. The remnants of Supernova 1054 are known as the Crab nebula or
as M1 which was the first object listed in the Messier catalog back
in 1758.
Through the eyepiece you need your eyes
to be dark adapted, or you may over look this faint little fuzzy
cloud. Finding M1 is relatively easy as it lies near the star ZetaTauri. Through the eyepiece M1 is very dim and has a bit of an oval shape
to it. Through my Omni XLT 150, which is a 6” telescope I couldn't
make out any details within the supernova at a magnification of 30x.
Stepping up the magnification to 60x or more rendered it almost
invisible, as magnifying an object usually reduces the amount of
light that enters your eye. For deep space objects less magnification is almost always better, especially for things like dim nebula or dim globular clusters.
Click to Enlarge.
This image above is 3 minutes worth of
data at 1600ISO, with 8 dark images also stacked to help remove noise
from the cameras sensor. I took two separate stacks of these images
and had Rachael Alexandra combine and edit them a bit further to bring out a little more
detail in the image. Image taken with a Canon 350D Prime Focus on the
Omni XLT 150 on March 11, 2012.
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