File:Hairy Crab Nebula.png

English: This is the hairy component of the Crab Nebula, in stark contrast to the swirly component. I see no way of illustrating the complete and utter dichotomy of structures contained within this single nebula than to post two separate images of it.

You might be used to seeing the Crab with much different colors. This is a narrowband image and assigning colors to narrowband filters is often done arbitrarily, but I've always found the portrayal of the Crab's colors to be much different from typical color assignments. In this version, you see the central part as quite blue, and that color often represents [O III] but that is not what it is. My version has [O III] represented by blue along with the other two also following in order from shorter to longer wavelengths, which is how I nearly always do these sorts of images. I think a lot of others follow this pattern as well, but it is important to remember that there is no one right way of doing it. For the Hubble release one might argue that it is easier to clearly see the structures with the colors that were used for that image.

Data came from the following proposal: An Emission Line Survey of the Crab Nebula

Red: WFPC2 F673N Green: WFPC2 F631N Blue: WFPC2 F502N

All channels, lightly screened: WFPC2 F547M

North is up.