June 30, 2014 - You’d Be Crabby If You Blew Up, Too
You’d Be Crabby If You Blew Up, Too Nine hundred sixty years ago this week a star in the constellation Taurus glowed as bright as the full Moon for several days. Chinese astronomers recorded the suddenly appearing star, which we now know to be a pulsar in the heart of the Crab Nebula. The Crab Nebula, the remains of that supernova explosion, is a highly energetic object, powered by the central spinning pulsar. This composite image of the Crab Nebula uses X-ray data from the Chandra telescope (light blue), optical data from Hubble (green and dark blue), and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The neutron star, which has the mass equivalent of the Sun crammed into a rapidly spinning ball of neutrons just 20 km (12 mi) across, is the white dot in the center of the image.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / CXC / JPL-Caltech / J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State Univ.) / R. Gehrz (Univ. Minn.) / STScI
Weekly Calendar
June 30 - July 6, 2014
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 30
Moon at apogee
1908: Tunguska impact levels hundreds of miles of Siberian forest
2001: WMAP spacecraft launched
Tuesday 1
Canada Day (Canada)
Mercury appears stationary
1917: 100” mirror arrives at Mt. Wilson Observatory
1972: Wernher von Braun retires from NASA
1997: STS-94 Columbia launched
Wednesday 2
Venus 4° north of Aldebaran
1985: European Space Agency launches Giotto probe to study Halley’s Comet
Thursday 3
Earth at aphelion
1935: Harrison Schmitt born
Friday 4
Independence Day
Pluto at opposition
1054: Crab Nebula supernova observed
1997: Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars
2005: Deep Impact probe collides with comet Tempel 1
2006: STS-121 Discovery launched
Saturday 5
First Qtr Moon 7:59 AM ET
Mars 0.2° south of Moon
1966: Apollo-Saturn 203 launched
1982: Space Shuttle Challenger arrives at Kennedy Space Center for first time
Sunday 6
1687: Isaac Newton publishes his Principia