Related papers: Proper Motion of the Crab Pulsar Revisited
We present a detailed measurement of the proper motion of the Crab pulsar, with the primary goal of comparing the direction of its proper motion with the projected axis of its pulsar wind nebula (the projected spin axis of the pulsar). We…
We have used a set of archived HST/WFPC2 exposures of the inner regions of the Crab Nebula to obtain a new measurement of the pulsar proper motion, the first after the original work of Wyckoff & Murray, more than 20 years ago. Our…
Owing to the dramatic evolution of telescopes as well as optical detectors in the last 20 yrs, we are now able to measure anew the proper motion of the Crab pulsar, after the classical result of Wyckoff and Murray (1977) in a time span 40…
It has been noted that the Crab and Vela pulsar proper motions lie along the symmetry axes of their wind nebulae. In an effort to promote this observation to a serious test of kick physics, we are using CXO images and other data to estimate…
We present extensive proper motion measurements of the Crab Nebula made from Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope MegaPrime/MegaCam images taken in 2007, 2016, and 2019. A total of 19974 proper motion vectors with uncertainty…
We present three high resolution radio images of the Crab nebula, taken in 1998.6, 1998.8 and 2000.1 with the VLA. These are the best radio images of the Crab to date. We show that, near the pulsar, there are significant changes between our…
A model of an accelerated expansion of the Crab Nebula powered by the spinning-down Crab pulsar is proposed, in which time dependence of the acceleration is connected with evolution of pulsar luminosity. Using recent observational data, we…
The Crab nebula is one of the most studied cosmic particle accelerators, shining brightly across the entire electromagnetic spectrum up to very high-energy gamma rays. It is known from radio to gamma-ray observations that the nebula is…
Magnetic dissipation is frequently invoked as a way of powering the observed emission of relativistic flows in Gamma Ray Bursts and Active Galactic Nuclei. Pulsar Wind Nebulae provide closer to home cosmic laboratories which can be used to…
In this letter, we describe results of new high-resolution axisymmetric relativistic MHD simulations of Pulsar Wind Nebulae. The simulations reveal strong breakdown of the equatorial symmetry and highly variable structure of the pulsar wind…
Chandra images of the Crab Nebula resolve the detailed structure of its "inner ring", possibly a termination shock where pulsar-accelerated relativistic particles begin to emit X radiation. Analysis of these images finds that the center of…
The Crab nebula and its pulsar have been observed for about 3 hours with the high-speed photo-polarimeter OPTIMA in January 2002 at the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope. The Crab pulsar intensity and polarization are determined at all phases of…
We have observed the pulsar in the Crab Nebula at high radio frequencies and high time resolution. We present continuously sampled data at 640-ns time resolution, and individual bright pulses recorded at down to 0.25-ns time resolution.…
We present HST/STIS far-UV observations of the Crab nebula and its pulsar. Broad, blueshifted absorption arising in the nebula is seen in C IV 1550, reaching about 2500 km/s. This can be interpreted as evidence for a fast outer shell, and…
Observations of the Crab Nebula have proven to be the best tool to calibrate and to characterize the performance of a Cherenkov telescope. Scientifically, it is interesting to measure the energy spectrum of the Crab Nebula close to the…
We summarize here the results, most of which are preliminary, of a number of recent observations of the Crab nebula system with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. We discuss four different topics: (1) The motion on long (> 1yr) time scales of…
I propose that the moving `wisps' near the center of the Crab Nebula result from nonlinear Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in the equatorial plane of the shocked pulsar wind. Recent observations suggest that the wisps trace out circular…
The Crab nebula pulsar was observed in 2009 January and December with a novel very fast optical photon counter, Iqueye, mounted at the ESO 3.5 m New Technology Telescope. Thanks to the exquisite quality of the Iqueye data, we computed…
The Crab Pulsar's radio emission is unusual, consisting predominantly of giant pulses, with durations of about a micro-second but structure down to the nano-second level, and brightness temperatures of up to $10^{37}\,$K. It is unclear how…
We study electron and positron acceleration at the termination shock of a striped pulsar wind. Drift motion along the shock surface keeps either electrons or positrons -but not both, close to the equatorial plane of the pulsar, where they…