M1 - The expansion of The Crab Nebula over 35 Years
M1 - The Crab Nebula in Taurus
  • Description: The crab nebula is the visible cloud of expanding gas from a supernova witnessed by Chinese astronomers in 1054 AD. Material from that explosion is still expanding. I have aligned three of my images spanning 35 years, two months. While there are some differences between the pictures (such as the number of stars) much of the detail is static. However, if you look at the outer edges of The Crab - expecially at the lower right and upper left - you can see some changes in the size of the nebula. The outer "tendrils" are clearly moving between between the three pictures.

    On the left side of the picture a foreground star is also moving. This is TYC 1309-1640-1, a magnitude 11.6 star moving at 0.247 arc seconds per year or a total of 8.68 arc seconds over the duration of this image.

    I have a 2 step colour version of the crab over 18 years here.

  • Image 1: 35mm film camera
  • Scope 1: 16" f4.5 Newtonian
  • Filter 1: Lumicon hydrogen-alpha filter.
  • Exposure 1: 45 minutes
  • Location 1: suburbs of Calgary, Ab.
  • Date 1: December 6, 1986

  • Image 2: SBIG ST-8
  • Scope 2: 8" f9 Vixen VISAC flat-field Cassegrain
  • Filter 2: Hutech Type II red filter.
  • Exposure 2: 20 minutes binned 2x2
  • Location 2: Wilson Coulee Observatory, Ab.
  • Date 2: February 21, 2004

  • Image 3: SBIG STF-8300M
  • Scope 3: 8" f9 Vixen VISAC flat-field Cassegrain
  • Filter 3: Baader Red.
  • Exposure 3: 10 minutes x 5 binned 1x1
  • Location 3: Wilson Coulee Observatory, Ab.
  • Date 2: February 25, 2022
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