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Explanation: The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous 18th century list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, debris from the death explosion of a massive star, witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. This sharp, ground-based telescopic view uses narrowband data to track emission from ionized oxygen and hydrogen atoms (in blue and red) and explore the tangled filaments within the still expanding cloud. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning...

Source:   University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) Date:   Posted 7/17/2002 The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun's surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova...

'As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced' A pair of European astrophysicists believe they've solved the mystery of exceedingly bright, never-repeated flashes of radio waves that come to us from the distant past. The source of those brief, intense flashes can be defined in two ways, depending upon whether you'd prefer to look at the event as a death or a birth. "We suggest that a fast radio burst represents the final signal of a supramassive rotating neutron star that collapses to a black hole due to magnetic braking," write Heino Falcke of...

Explanation: Normally faint and elusive, the Jellyfish Nebula is caught in this alluring telescopic view. Drifting near bright star Eta Geminorum, at the foot of a celestial twin, the Jellyfish Nebula is seen dangling tentacles from the bright arcing ridge of emission left of center. In fact, the cosmic jellyfish is part of bubble-shaped supernova remnant IC 443, the expanding debris cloud from a massive star that exploded. Light from the explosion first reached planet Earth over 30,000 years ago. Like its cousin in astrophysical waters the Crab Nebula supernova remnant, IC 443 is known to harbor a neutron star,...

Pulsars, superdense neutron stars, are perhaps the most extraordinary physics laboratories in the universe. Research on these extreme and exotic objects already has produced two Nobel Prizes. Pulsar researchers now are poised to learn otherwise-unavailable details of nuclear physics to test general relativity in conditions of extremely strong gravity, and to directly detect gravitational waves with a “telescope” nearly the size of our galaxy. Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars that exploded as supernovae. They pack more than the mass of the Sun into a sphere no larger than a medium-sized city, making them the densest objects in...

One of the fastest moving stars ever seen is challenging theories to explain its blistering speed. The cosmic cannonball, a neutron star known as RX J0822-4300, was discovered with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Astronomers used five years of Chandra observations to show that the rogue star is careening away from the Puppis A supernova remnant, leftovers of a star that exploded about 3,700 years ago. The neutron star is racing out of our Milky Way Galaxy at about 3 million mph (4.8 million kph). "Just after it was born, this neutron star got a one-way ticket out of the galaxy,"...

A distant eruption of high-energy gamma rays is evidence for a black hole swallowing another dense object called a neutron star, astronomers announced today. A neutron star is a stellar corpse with a mass equal to a few suns packed into a space no more than 12 miles across. Black holes are even denser objects, so dense that matter and even light can't escape once inside their spheres of invisible influence. Scientists have long suspected collisions between these objects are common. Other recent bursts have looked similar, but observations from NASA's orbiting Swift satellite and other telescopes, recorded July 24...

Earthquakes and Tsunamis are triggered by Star-quakes – the invisible interconnection between different parts of the Universe The position of SGR1806-20 in a radio image of the sky - 50,000 light-years away Staff Reporter Mar. 7, 2005 Computer models are showing an interesting relationship between star-quakes and earthquakes. Supernova, star-quakes and similar burst of energy in the Universe triggers earthquakes and tsunamis. According to researchers, most of the large earthquakes and Tsunamis happened when there was a burst of energy somewhere in the cosmos. According to BBC, Astronomers say they have been stunned by the amount of energy released in...

A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival. But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light. The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). The commotion was caused by...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 March 6 N49's Cosmic Blast Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA), Y. Chu (UIUC) et al., NASA Explanation: Scattered debris from a cosmic supernova explosion lights up the sky in this gorgeous composited image based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Cataloged as N49, these glowing filaments of shocked gas span about 30 light-years in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Light from the...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 27 Accretion Disk Simulation Credit: Michael Owen, John Blondin (North Carolina State Univ.) Explanation: Don't be fooled by the familiar symmetry. The graceful spiral structure seen in this computer visualization does not portray winding spiral arms in a distant galaxy of stars. Instead, the graphic shows spiral shock waves in a three dimensional simulation of an accretion disk -- material swirling onto a compact central object...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 20 The Crab Nebula Pulsar Shrugs Credit: J. Hester (ASU), CXC, HST, NOAO, NSF, NASA Explanation: How does a city-sized neutron star power the vast Crab Nebula? The expulsion of wisps of hot gas at high speeds appears to be at least part of the answer. Yesterday time-lapse movies taken from both the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope were released showing a wisp...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 August 30 Semeis 147: Supernova RemnantCredit & Copyright: Steve Mandel Explanation: It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this stunningly detailed image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Seen towards the constellation Taurus it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky corresponding to a width of 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. On three separate...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 14 The Crab Nebula from VLT Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT, ESO Explanation: The Crab Nebula, filled with mysterious filaments, is the result of a star that was seen to explode in 1054 AD. This spectacular supernova explosion was recorded by Chinese and (quite probably) Anasazi Indian astronomers. The filaments are mysterious because they appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 17 NGC 4697: X-Rays from an Elliptical Galaxy Credit : C. Sarazin (UVa), et al., CXC, NASA Explanation: The many bright, point-like sources in this Chandra Observatory x-ray image lie within NGC 4697, an elliptical galaxy some 40 million light-years away towards Virgo. Like other normal elliptical galaxies, NGC 4697 is a spherical ensemble of mainly older, fainter, low mass stars, with little star forming gas...