[M1]

Optical images of the Crab Pulsar

[M1 Pulsar, Leuschner Obs.]

Picture of the Crab pulsar taken at the Leuschner Observatory by Dick Treffers, taken through a 30-inch reflector with a CCD camera equipped with a rotating wheel. The wheel spun with same frequency as the pulsar flashes: 29.9 Hertz. Each sub-image shows the pulsar at a particular phase, and took one minute of integration time. The phases proceed 45 deg from image to image in the sequence.

Adopted from Michael Richmond's service

[M1 pulsar, NOAO]

NOAO image of the Crab pulsar

Here, a time sequence for the pulsar in the Crab nebula is shown, and its location in the Crab nebula (as shown in a KPNO 4-meter Mayall image). The images of this sequence were also obtained with the 4-meter Mayall telescope on Kitt Peak, during the night of 20 October 1989 using a standard B-band optical filter and the Kitt Peak Photon Counting Array (KPCA). Phased accumulation over almost 2 hours was necessary to create this image; the observed period that day was 33.36702 milliseconds.

Each of the 33 images represents a time slice of about 1 millisecond in the pulsar period. The brighter, primary pulse is visible in the first column: the weaker, broader inter-pulse can be seen in the second column.
Credit: N.A.Sharp/AURA/NOAO/NSF

  • More information on this image (N.A. Sharp, NOAO). Also links to higher-resolution versions of this image.
  • More NOAO images


    Hartmut Frommert
    Christine Kronberg
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    Last Modification: June 18, 1999