It was fascinating for me to see
images which show the expansion of the Crab Nebula over many years. And I was wondering if i can detect the expansion over a period of one year with my scope.
I've took the first snapshot of the nebula on October 6th 2021:
M1 The 2021 data was excellent. Unfortunately I could not get comparable data this year because of worse seeing and lack of clear sky.
My estimate was that the nebula is expanding at a rate 0.15 arcsec per year (given distance from Earth 6500 ly and the absolute expansion rate 1500 km/s). This is about 1/3 of a my system pixel at native resolution. So I did not expect to see any expansion. I was wrong as you can see
The expansion is clearly visible.
I'll continue to take a snapshot every year.
Enjoy!
Vitali
Update 19 October 2023:
Another snapshot has been taken at the beginning of October 2023. The animation (Revision E) now contains 3 frames. I did not use deconvolution and any sharpening in order to make sure that the original details are preserved.
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