Flythrough of the Crab Nebula

This 3D reconstruction of the Crab Nebula is made of 406,472 individual points where nebular emission has been detected in SITELLE spectra. The velocity of each element has been translated into a spatial position by assuming an unaccelerated outward motion. The glowing blue sphere at the centre is artificial and simulates the continuum emitted by the pulsar wind nebula. The Milky Way background (credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) simulates the perspective as observed when moving around the nebula. The soundtrack is a sonification of the data set: using the interferograms directly as a sound wave, multiple samples have been mixed and played at different rates. The sound volume is proportional to the distance to the nebula, and the playing speed simulates the Doppler effect. Credit: Thomas Martin, Danny Milisavljevic and Laurent Drissen