One of the coolest objects for backyard astronomy is the Crab Nebula, shown above. High energy detectors have found its more than pretty: the nebula is firing off lots high energy gamma-rays:
Using the Very Energetic Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS), a group of international astrophysicists spotted gamma rays with energies exceeding 100 billion electron-volts emitted from the fast spinning Crab Pulsar supernova that was discovered in 1968. “If you asked theorists a year ago whether we would see gamma-ray pulses this energetic, almost all of them would have said, ‘No.’ There’s just no theory that can account for what we’ve found,” said corresponding author Martin Schroedter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
That’s a lot of energy, but a freshly minted, rapidly rotating neutron star like the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula has a lot of energy to work with. Just a baseball sized meteor falling to the surface in that enormous gravity well would hit with the energy of a small nova. I’m sure scientists will come up with some fascinating explanations for the gamma rays soon.
The Crab, and APOD, is what hooked me, first time I saw it, and understood a little about the massive power involved in such a tiny object as that neutron star, and I’ve tried wrapping my head around it ever since. Amazing.
I hope I’m still around if/when telescopes can give us a glimpse of the actual star remnant.
Cue the WSJ “Scientists were wrong about the Crab Nebula, therefore global warming is a hoax” in 3..2..1..