Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...21110026h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #100.26; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.916
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
2
Scientific paper
The HST/ACS has been used to obtain polarization observations of the inner portion of the Crab Synchrotron Nebula. The morphology of the interior of the Crab is quite different when viewed in polarized and unpolarized light. Sharp wispy features dominate the polarized image. The wisps in the equatorial torus are sharp and prominent in polarized light. The body of the nebula outside of the torus also appears fibrous in polarized light. The brightest polarized light comes from the very front and the very back of the high latitude halo to the NW of the pulsar, and from the knot located 0".5 SE of the pulsar. The unpolarized intensity is dominated by more diffuse and irregular emission. Significantly, bright unpolarized emission is seen from knots of emission at the base and along the length of the jet. Some theoretical models of the jet predict that these features should be highly polarized.
Observations of the Crab show a clear SE-NW symmetry axis associated with the spin axis of the pulsar. Even so, images of the Crab in polarized light show an hourglass structure running N-S, roughly centered on the pulsar, with a reconstructed magnetic field direction running E-W through the body of the nebula. The new observations show that the N-S structure is a consequence of the fact that the total polarization represents a line of sight integral through the body of the nebula rather than the polarization of any physical structure. By isolating and background subtracting individual features, we show that the magnetic field follows along all of the wispy or fibrous structure in the nebula, demonstrating that these are flux tubes running along the field direction. When viewed in this way, the polarization structure has the same SE-NW axisymmetry as the rest of the nebula.
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