This new Hubble image - One among the
largest ever produced with the Earth-orbiting observatory - shows gives
the most detailed view so far of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. The
Crab is arguably the single most interesting object, as well as one of
the most studied, in all of astronomy. The image is the largest image
ever taken with Hubble’s WFPC2 workhorse camera.
The Crab Nebula is one of the most intricately structured and highly
dynamical objects ever observed. The new Hubble image of the Crab was
assembled from 24 individual exposures taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble
Space Telescope and is the highest resolution image of the entire Crab
Nebula ever made.
Credit: NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff
Hester (Arizona State University). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (www.skyfactory.org).
Why
this image is shown on this website?
This Hubble image was created
from HST data from a proposal by astronomer Jeff Hester
(Arizona State University) and other (see
here). The Exposures were taken in October 1999,
January 2000 and December 2000.
The final colour image was produced in collaboration
between me, ESA/Hubble (http://www.spacetelescope.org/)
and NASA. I downloaded the data from the ESO/ST-ECF
archive and we decided to use them to make an image for
the large public. The result is the colour mosaic shown
here.
We used VLT data to fill some gaps in the HST mosaic and
to provide a nice field of view for the image.
I have put on this image much work, enthusiasm and
passion, and I feel it a bit mine. Davide
For some strange reasons, the release of this
image led "TG5",
one of the most important italian newscast, to breafly interview
me about the Crab. The report was broadcasted on December 15,
2005. If you like, click on "play" button (in
Italian language).
Find
Chart
The
position of the Crab Nebula (in the red
dot) in Taurus constellation.
Image from Cartes du Ciel.
This image is a composite from 24
exposures taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 mounted on
Hubble Space Telescope. The exposures were
recorded using three filters: F502N (O III), F631N (O I) and F673N (S
II).
