# 10: THE CRAB NEBULA

In the year 1054 A.D. a brilliant new star suddenly appeared in the sky. Located within the horns of Taurus, the Bull, it initially seemed at least several times brighter than Venus and for 23 days was readily visible against a clear, blue daytime sky before it slowly began to fade. For a total of 653 days it could be seen with the naked eye, before it finally faded completely out of sight.

The Chinese called such a star a "guest star," because it visited for a while and then left. But this was an object that was far from being a new star. Rather it was a massive star that blew completely apart, leaving behind an expanding cloud of gaseous debris that we have come to know as the Crab Nebula.

This object is now nearly overhead during the early evening hours, but a word of caution: you should also have access to a dark, clear sky, for at magnitude +8.4, the Crab unfortunately has a tendency to get lost in the background illumination in light polluted locations. It may be just barely visible as a dim patch of light in good binoculars.

It is more readily detectable in a 3-inch telescope and begins to appear as irregularly oval-shaped with telescopes of 6-inch aperture or greater. It was, in fact, the Crab Nebula’s resemblance to a telescopic comet that prompted Messier to compile his celebrated catalogue of such fuzzy objects so that they might not deceive other comet hunters. The Crab Nebula is first on his list and is therefore known as M (Messier) 1.

The moniker "Crab Nebula" came about from an 1844 sketch of it made by the English astronomer, the third Earl of Rosse.

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