Flare States of the Crab Nebula

For those who haven't seen it, this is from NASA Astrophysics and the amazings at Goddard Space Flight Center. The famous Crab Nebula supernova remnant has erupted in an enormous flare five times more powerful than any flare previously seen from the object. On April 12, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope first detected the outburst, which lasted six days.

The nebula is the wreckage of an exploded star that emitted light which reached Earth in the year 1054. It is located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. At the heart of an expanding gas cloud lies what is left of the original star's core, a superdense neutron star that spins 30 times a second. With each rotation, the star swings intense beams of radiation toward Earth, creating the pulsed emission characteristic of spinning neutron stars (also known as pulsars).

Apart from these pulses, astrophysicists believed the Crab Nebula was a virtually constant source of high-energy radiation. But in January, scientists associated with several orbiting observatories, including NASA's Fermi, Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, reported long-term brightness changes at X-ray energies.

"The Crab Nebula hosts high-energy variability that we're only now fully appreciating," said Rolf Buehler, a member of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) team at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a facility jointly located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.

Since 2009, Fermi and the Italian Space Agency's AGILE satellite have detected several short-lived gamma-ray flares at energies greater than 100 million electron volts (eV) -- hundreds of times higher than the nebula's observed X-ray variations. For comparison, visible light has energies between 2 and 3 eV.

On April 12, Fermi's LAT, and later AGILE, detected a flare that grew about 30 times more energetic than the nebula's normal gamma-ray output and about five times more powerful than previous outbursts. On April 16, an even brighter flare erupted, but within a couple of days, the unusual activity completely faded out.

"These superflares are the most intense outbursts we've seen to date, and they are all extremely puzzling events," said Alice Harding at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We think they are caused by sudden rearrangements of the magnetic field not far from the neutron star, but exactly where that's happening remains a mystery."

The Crab's high-energy emissions are thought to be the result of physical processes that tap into the neutron star's rapid spin. Theorists generally agree the flares must arise within about one-third of a light-year from the neutron star, but efforts to locate them more precisely have proven unsuccessful so far.

Since September 2010, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory routinely has monitored the nebula in an effort to identify X-ray emission associated with the outbursts. When Fermi scientists alerted astronomers to the onset of a new flare, Martin Weisskopf and Allyn Tennant at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., triggered a set of pre-planned observations using Chandra.

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[Thedethzombie]

Holy Shit! i'm fucking stoned

[ResiusOnline]

Could this energy some day be... harnessed O_o ?

[popnstart]

Those are some really mad molecules.

[coldarc]

the crab nebula is not a crab nebula its a galaxy under formation. the picture is taken in xray, the colors are false. i have seen a combination of two frequencies of the same picture that clearly show signs of spiral arms.

[KaletheQuick]

Maybe it is wobbling randomly, so at times it is more pointed at our solar system...

[saigondj]

the crab vagina

[saigondj]

crab lol

[89990000]

@Mustafo95

A god is immortal. But don't start arguing. Figure out what is best for you. Take an option.

[89990000]

@shoa31

No, God is proud of me, f--k your cult!!!

[89990000]

@mrxxbrian

hey.....those dislikers are just trolls.

[lovedrugsalotlikedam]

@early60srcool Oh by the way the 60s were cool especially the oldies:) oh man how much I miss there music! its just not the same no more:/ fuck the new era-_-

[lovedrugsalotlikedam]

@early60srcool indeed it is:) what if i said we could have aliens walking on our earth what if i said we could interact with other species on other planets? let me tell you something all these "what if" are TRUE but are stupid government doesnt allow any of these classification exposed :( there hiding everything from us and what they show us is nothing, there like 5x more ahead than what we see and know it unfair and sucks but we cant do nothing about it : |