蟹狀星雲
' w+ O2 A. K& E" Z @Composite Crab
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Credit: NASA - X-ray: CXC, J.Hester (ASU) et al.;
6 f9 j/ f# l8 x' g' Y" @. yOptical: ESA, J.Hester and A.Loll (ASU); Infrared: JPL-Caltech, R.Gehrz (U. Minn)
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The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from the death explosion of a massive star. This intriguing false-color image combines data from space-based observatories, Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer, to explore the debris cloud in x-rays (blue-purple), optical (green), and infrared (red) light. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is the bright spot near picture center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.
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說明:
* o6 p0 }3 h4 I( z 蟹狀星雲的編錄是M1，也就是梅西葉著名的「非彗星型錄」的第一個天體。現在我們知道蟹狀星雲是一個超新星遺骸--大質量恆星死亡爆炸所產生的擴張碎片雲。這幅有趣的假色影像，組合了來自錢卓拉、哈伯和史匹哲等太空天文望遠鏡的數據，在X射線 (藍-紫)、可見光 (綠)和紅外光 (紅)波段探索這團宇宙碎片雲。星雲中心附近的亮斑是蟹狀星雲波霎，為一顆每轉自轉30次的中子星，是現代天文學家公認最奇特的天體之一。就像一個宇宙級的發電機，這顆恆星核崩塌所產生的遺骸，是蟹狀星雲發出各種電磁波段輻射的能量源。蟹狀星雲位在金牛座內，離我們約有6,500光年遠，大小約有12光年。
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! I: W9 C7 w7 I! v6 a$ c資料來源: Scientific American7 f1 n; K1 N$ S d6 g
Department of Physics, NCKU
