Sep 28 1999
From The Space Library
NASA announced that after just two months in space, the Chandra X-ray Observatory had taken "a stunning image of the Crab Nebula," revealing for the first time "a brilliant ring about the nebula's heart." The Crab Nebula, located 6,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Taurus, is the remnant of a star that Chinese astronomers had observed exploding in 1054 A.D., when it "appeared suddenly and remained visible for weeks, even during daytime." Astronomers had used "virtually every astronomical instrument" to study the Crab's area of the sky, discovering that unlocking its mysteries led to "insight after insight" into how the universe works. Astronomers had linked the origin of pulsars to supernovas and confirmed the cosmic origin of chemical elements through the study of the "expanding cloud of filaments" in the Crab. The new image showed the Crab pulsar "accelerating particles up to the speed of light and flinging them out into interstellar space at an incredible rate." Using Chandra's "exceptional resolution," scientists had traced the jet all the way to the neutron star, where the ring pattern clearly appeared. Previously, Hubble Space Telescope images had revealed "moving knots and wisps around the neutron star," and other x-ray images had shown the outer portions of the jet, only hinting at the ring structure.
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