NIKA 150 GHz polarization observations of the Crab nebula and its spectral energy distribution

Understand

The Crab nebula is a supernova remnant exhibiting a highly polarized synchrotron radiation at radio and millimeter wavelengths.

• It is the brightest source in the microwave sky with an extension of 7 by 5 arcminutes and commonly used as a standard candle for any experiment which aims at measuring the polarization of the sky.
• Though its spectral energy distribution has been well characterized in total intensity, polarization data are still lacking at millimetre wavelengths.
• We report in this paper high resolution (18 arcsec FWHM) observations of the Crab nebula in total intensity and linear polarization at 150 GHz with the NIKA camera.