The Spirit of Halloween Lives On
According to the folklore of the Celts and other
ancient cultures, Halloween marked the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and
the winter solstice on the astronomical calendar, a spooky night when spirits of
the dead spread havoc upon their return to Earth.
Crab Nebula
According to the folklore of the Celts and other ancient cultures, Halloween marked the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice on the astronomical calendar, a spooky night when spirits of the dead spread havoc upon their return to Earth.
Nowadays, Halloween is primarily a time for children to dress in costume and demand treats, but the original spirit of Halloween lives on in the sky in the guise of the Crab Nebula.
A star’s spectacular death in the constellation Taurus was observed on Earth as the supernova of 1054 A.D. Now, almost a thousand years later, a superdense neutron star left behind by the stellar death is spewing out a blizzard of extremely high-energy particles into the expanding debris field known as the Crab Nebula.
It’s really worth a peek, once a month or so, to see what the folks at the Chandra Observatory are up to.
Posted: Wed - October 25, 2006 at 06:43 AM