Crab nebula animation over 9 years
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Dear RAC and CAS,
I
created an interesting animation showing what I believe are true
changes in the appearance of the Crab Nebula over a span of about 9
years. The first image was taken in February 2016 and the second image
was taken in January 2025. I had to scale the images to the same size,
and manually do a 2-star alignment to compensate for the different image
scales. Fortunately the orientation was nearly the same so this went well. The first image was taken using a Meade 12" LX-200 at about
f6.5 and using an ATIK-314E CCD camera with no filter. It is a stack of
10 120-second exposures. The 2025 image was taken using a 10" f7.9 R-C
and QHY 294 M Pro CMOS camera with no filter. It is a stack of 10
60-second exposures.
I
believe the images show apparent changes in the synchrotron radiation
glow of the nebula as well as a subtle expansion of the nebula itself!
In addition there is a high proper motion star (UCAC4-561-018089) at the
lower left part of the frame that can be seen drifting south in
declination about 2 arc-seconds. According to Cartes du Ceil-it has an
annual proper motion of about 241 milli-arcseconds /year.? There also
appears to be a possible variable at the top right part of the frame.
I probably should have labelled each image with the year. The 2025 image is the one with the high proper motion star in its "up " position.
Myron Wasiuta
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Myron Wasiuta