I found a very cool MPEG movie on Harvard's website. It is time lapsed video of the Crab Nebula in Taurus taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It totally rocks:
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The Crab Nebula is 6,000 light years away, and about 10 light years across. I also hear they have delicious crab there.
The Crab Nebula is the most famous and conspicuous remnant of a supernova, and one of only a handful of supernovae witnessed on Earth in recorded history. It happened sometime around 5,000 BC. It took around 6,000 years for the light to travel to Earth, and in the year 1054 was witnessed and recorded by monks in both Europe and China. According to records, it was visible in daylight for 23 days, and to the naked eye in the night sky for 653 days. There are petroglyphs in the Southwestern U.S. that many believe memorialize the supernova of 1054.
The supernova is about my favorite topic in astrophysics (a subject that was my major in college for two years). To me, supernovae are not just the mothers of all explosions. God's recipe for life in the Universe includes the instruction "Mix Well." Supernovae are God's Cuisinarts. I also can't think of anything else that has given us more insight into the Universe than Supernovae. So, here's to you Mr. Supernova-Man; blowing the hell out of everything and outshining whole galaxies and leaving behind pulsars and black holes and cool-looking nebula and messing with astronomer's heads with your gamma ray pulses and stuff.
1 comment:
Well, there's another physics geek in the family except my interest was in theorhetical physics. It was a brief love affair back in the early 90's sparked mostly by "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. I've sort of switched over from the camp that wants to understand the mystery to the camp that simply wants to appreciate the mystery.
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