Landing page for project EM155

We propose to image the innermost regions of the Crab Nebula with EVN + eMERLIN at 1.6 and 5 GHz. The Crab Nebula contains rich structure: a pulsar wind termination shock, a bipolar outflow, and a number of elliptical ripples (wisps). The wisps are most likely powered by the pulsar spin-down energy. However, the exact physical process behind this mechanism is unknown, with a wide range of physical phenomena that affect the evolution of the wind. Therefore, to understand the physical properties of the wisps material, we need to image the innermost part of the Crab Nebula at high resolution and with excellent structural sensitivity to detect the extended emission in this region. The combination of the high sensitivity short baselines of eMERLIN and the long baselines available in the EVN array would be ideal to understand the physics of the Crab Nebula. To extract the multiscale information available in the data optimally we developed a novel multiresolution imaging software. This will enable us to understand the physical processes behind the rapid evolution of the Crab Nebula.

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197