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The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from a drawing that somewhat resembled a crab with arms produced by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse , in 1842 or 1843 using a 36-inch (91 cm) telescope . [ 6 ]
Thomas Gold has shown that the pulsar's spin-down power is sufficient to power the Crab Nebula. A subsequent study by them, including William D. Brundage, also found that the NP 0532 source is located at the Crab Nebula. [20] A radio source was also reported coincident with the Crab Nebula in late 1968 by L. I. Matveenko in Soviet Astronomy. [21]
The Crab Nebula is a pulsar wind nebula associated with the 1054 supernova.It is located about 6,500 light-years from the Earth. [1]A near-Earth supernova is an explosion resulting from the death of a star that occurs close enough to the Earth (roughly less than 10 to 300 parsecs [30 to 1000 light-years] away [2]) to have noticeable effects on Earth's biosphere.
The Crab pulsar 33-millisecond pulse period was too short to be consistent with other proposed models for pulsar emission. Moreover, the Crab pulsar is so named because it is located at the center of the Crab Nebula, consistent with the 1933 prediction of Baade and Zwicky. [23]
[2] [5] New pulsar wind nebulae appear soon after a pulsar's creation, and typically sit inside a supernova remnant, for example the Crab Nebula, [6] or the nebula within the large Vela Supernova Remnant. [7] As the pulsar wind nebula ages, the supernova remnant dissipates and disappears.
In 1938, Walter Baade became the first astronomer to identify a nebula as a supernova remnant when he suggested that the Crab Nebula was the remains of SN 1054. He noted that, while it had the appearance of a planetary nebula, the measured velocity of expansion was much too large to belong to that classification. [35]
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1942 – J.J.L. Duyvendak, Nicholas Mayall, and Jan Oort deduce that the Crab Nebula is a remnant of the 1054 supernova observed by Chinese astronomers. 1958 – Evry Schatzman, Kent Harrison, Masami Wakano, and John Wheeler show that white dwarfs are unstable to inverse beta decay.