The Crab Nebula’s Moving Wisps in Radio

We present three high resolution radio images of the Crab nebula, taken in1998.6, 1998.8 and 2000.1 with the VLA. These are the best radio images of theCrab to date. We show that, near the pulsar, there are significant changesbetween our three observing epochs. These changes have an elliptical geometryvery similar to that of the optical wisps. One radio wisp in particular can beunambiguously identified between two of our observing epochs, and moves outwardwith an apparent velocity of ~0.24. The similarity in both morphology andbehavior of the present radio wisps to the optical wisps suggests that they areassociated. This implies that the radio wisps, like the optical ones, arelikely manifestations of the shock in the Crab pulsar's wind. This suggeststhat the radio emitting electrons are accelerated in the same region as theones responsible for the optical to X-ray emission, contrary to most currentmodels.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures (6 figure files), LaTeX, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa