M1: The Crab Nebula from Hubble

OK,

Growing up, my dad had a fascination with the Crab Nebula.

I didn’t know it was 10 light-years in size.

That size would put Pluto’s orbital diameter at ~.01% (.0001) of the above image.

The high-rez version of image is 3864x3864 pixels.That puts Pluto’s orbit at about a half pixel.

Yikes! Those astronomical scales do give one pause…

That used to be the desktop image on my old computer. There was plenty of black in the picture to place icons without losing them.

CAN’T SLEEP, CRAB WILL EAT ME!

Somewhere, I have an 8x10 glossy of the Crab Nebula that was discarded from the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.

There were some perks to being the handyman there (the handyman emptied the bins).