IR Compendium: Crab Nebula || SPITZER HOME || SPITZER SCIENCE || COMPENDIUM HOME || EXAMPLES INDEX ||

Table of Contents

• Basic information
• Infrared Fluxes
• Spectral Energy Distributions
• Infrared Images
• Infrared Spectra
• Spitzer Observations
• Further Reading

Basic Information

• Common name: Crab Nebula

• Other names: M1, IRAS 05314+2200

• Position:RA= 05h34m31.97s Dec=+22d00m52.1s (J2000)

• Type: supernova remnant, pulsar

• Parallax: 7 mas (Jenkins, 1952)

Many observations of the Crab Nebula in the IR have concentrated on studies of the pulsar and the associated emission mechanisms. Spitzer observations of the Crab Nebula will mostly concentrate on discerning the composition of the dust within the nebula and measure the dust production from both the supernova and previous stellar winds from the progenitor star.

Infrared Fluxes

Spectral Energy Distributions

This SED was created using the sensitivity and saturation values available in November 2004. The black dots are the object surface brightness calculated by assuming the fluxes listed above are uniformly distributed throughout the beam sizes quoted in the reference papers. The green and red lines are the respective sensitivity and saturation limits for each instrument. The sensitivity values used are for a 5 sigma detection of an extended source with a 500 second exposure.

Infrared images

DSS 2nd Generation Red (Search the DSS)

2MASS K band (Search the 2MASS Quicklook Image Server)

ISO-CAM 6.4 microns (Search the ISO archive)

ISO-CAM 9.6 microns (Search the ISO archive)

5 degree IRAS 12 micron image centered on the Crab Nebula (Retrieve IRAS images using OASIS)

ISO-CAM 16.05 microns (Search the ISO archive)

5 degree IRAS 12 micron image centered on the Crab Nebula (Retrieve IRAS images using OASIS)

Infrared Spectra

ISO-CAM CVF spectra (Search the ISO archive)

ISO-CAM PHT spectra (Search the ISO archive)

ISO-CAM SWS spectra (Search the ISO archive)

ISO-CAM LWS spectra (Search the ISO archive)

Spitzer Observations

• This object is part of multiple GTO programs using all three Spitzer instruments (Program ID numbers 24 and 130)
  (You can download the AORs (Astronomical Observation Requests) for this object into Spot by using "View Program" under the "File" menu and entering these program IDs.)
• Search the ROC for planned observations

Further reading

• The Crab pulsar and its red knot in the near-infrared, Sollerman, J., 2003, A&A, 406, 639.
• Dust in the Tycho, Kepler and Crab supernova remnants, Douvion, T., Lagage, P. O., Cesarsky, C. J., Dwek, E., 2001, A&A, 373, 281.
• High Time Resolution Infrared Observations of the Crab Nebula Pulsar and the Pulsar Emission Mechanism, Eikenberry, S. S., Fazio, G. G., Ransom, S. M., Middleditch, J., Kristian, J., Pennypacker, C. R., 1997, ApJ, 477, 465.
• High time resolution infrared observations of the Crab Nebula pulsar, Ransom, S. M., Fazio, G. G., Eikenberry, S. S., Middleditch, J., Kristian, J., Hays, K., Pennypacker, C. R., 1994, ApJ, 431, 43.
• 0.95-1.3 micron spectrophotometry of two bright filaments of the Crab Nebula, Rudy, R. J., Rossano, G. S., Puetter, R. C., 1994, ApJ, 426, 646.