Messier 1 The Crab Nebula

[Jkulin]

With storms and unpredictable weather, not to mention a nearly full moon, I chose to go for M1 as I hadn't imaged this before.

I'm recovering from major spinal surgery, so I wanted to keep my mind off the pain.

I feel that it has come out OK, I wanted some LRGB for the star colours but the clouds arrived and held me back.

I particularly like the tale about M1: -

The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus. The current name is due to William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1840 using a 36-inch telescope and produced a drawing that looked somewhat like a crab. Corresponding to a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054, the nebula was observed later by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified with a historical supernova explosion.

At an apparent magnitude of 8.4, comparable to that of Saturn's moon Titan, it is not visible to the naked eye but can be made out using binoculars under favourable conditions. The nebula lies in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, at a distance of about 2.0 kiloparsecs (6,500 ly) from Earth. It has a diameter of 3.4 parsecs (11 ly), corresponding to an apparent diameter of some 7 arcminutes, and is expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometres per second (930 mi/s), or 0.5% of the speed of light.

At the center of the nebula lies the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star 28–30 kilometres (17–19 mi) across with a spin rate of 30.2 times per second, which emits pulses of radiation from gamma rays to radio waves. At X-ray and gamma ray energies above 30 keV, the Crab Nebula is generally the brightest persistent source in the sky, with measured flux extending to above 10 TeV. The nebula's radiation allows detailed study of celestial bodies that occult it. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Sun's corona was mapped from observations of the Crab Nebula's radio waves passing through it, and in 2003, the thickness of the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan was measured as it blocked out X-rays from the nebula.

Link to my Astrobin Library https://www.astrobin.com/s944bm/

This was taken over the 12th, 15th and 16th January 2020.

9 x 1200s Ha

8 x 1200s OIII

6 x 1200s SII

10"GSO Truss, iOptron 120EC, Moravian G2-8300 MkII, Chroma unmounted 2" filters 3nm

I have spent no more than 15 mins post processing, indeed it could benefit from more, but I rather like to see my images without all the tatting about as I feel they are more natural.

Edited January 18, 2020 by Jkulin
Typos

[happy-kat]

Like the write up as well.

[bob-c]

A lovely image of this object.

Bob.

[Toxophilus]

Fantastic image John. Your'e lucky to get some clear sky at the moment. Every time I set up the cloud seems to move in.

[Jkulin]

Just now, Toxophilus said:

Fantastic image John. Your'e lucky to get some clear sky at the moment. Every time I set up the cloud seems to move in.

Thanks Mark and we are only 6 miles apart