Latest Neutron star Stories
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist in our cosmic neighborhood. The 30-year-old black hole provides a unique opportunity to watch this type of object develop from infancy. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The black hole could help scientists better understand how massive...
Black holes could produce the enormous energies of a burst, but not neutron starsA gamma-ray burst is an immensely powerful blast of high-energy light thought to be generated by a collapsing star in a distant galaxy, but what this collapse leaves behind has been a matter of debate.A new analysis of four extremely bright bursts observed by NASA's Fermi satellite suggests that the remnant from a long-duration gamma-ray burst is most likely a black hole "“ not a rapidly spinning, highly...
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered the most massive neutron star yet found, a discovery with strong and wide-ranging impacts across several fields of physics and astrophysics."This neutron star is twice as massive as our Sun. This is surprising, and that much mass means that several theoretical models for the internal composition of neutron stars now are ruled out," said Paul Demorest, of the National Radio Astronomy...
Astronomers in Japan, using an X-ray detector on the International Space Station, and at Penn State University, using NASA's Swift space observatory, are announcing the discovery of an object newly emitting X-rays, which previously had been hidden inside our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation Centaurus.The object -- a binary system -- was revealed recently when an instrument on the International Space Station named MAXI (Monitor of All-Sky X-ray Image) on the Exposed Facility of the...
Dramatic flares and bursts of energy - activity previously thought reserved for only the strongest magnetized pulsars - have been observed emanating from a weakly magnetized, slowly rotating pulsar.The international team of astrophysicists who made the discovery believe that the source of the pulsar's power may be hidden deep within its surface.Pulsars, or neutron stars, are the collapsed remains of massive stars. Although they are on average only about 30km in diameter, they have hugely...
Astronomers using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have found the first fast X-ray pulsar to be eclipsed by its companion star. Further studies of this unique stellar system will shed light on some of the most compressed matter in the universe and test a key prediction of Einstein's relativity theory.The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star -- the crushed core of a massive star that long ago exploded as a supernova. Neutron stars pack more than the sun's mass into a ball nearly...
A team of European researchers have pinpointed a magnetar--an unusual type of neutron star that possesses an immensely powerful magnetic field--that was formed by a star that had at least 40 times more mass than our solar system's sun.The discovery, they say, could force scientists to rethink current theories of star evolution, and specifically, the amount of mass needed to form a black hole.According to the scientific website PhysOrg.com, "This proves for the first time that magnetars...
GREENBELT, Md., Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have found the first fast X-ray pulsar to be eclipsed by its companion star. Further studies of this unique stellar system will shed light on some of the most compressed matter in the universe and test a key prediction of Einstein's relativity theory. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The...
For decades, X-ray astronomers have studied the complex behavior of binary systems pairing a normal star with a black hole. In these systems, gas from the normal star streams toward the black hole and forms a disk around it. Friction within the disk heats the gas to millions of degrees -- hot enough to produce X-rays. At the disk's inner edge, near the black hole, strong magnetic fields eject some of the gas into dual, oppositely directed jets that blast outward at about half the speed of...
An international team of scientists including University of British Columbia astronomer Ingrid Stairs has discovered a promising way to fine-tune pulsars into the best precision time-pieces in the Universe.The discovery could give astronomers a new tool to study the powerful gravitational forces that shaped the universe.Pulsars--incredibly fast spinning collapsed stars--have been studied in great detail since their discovery in 1967. The extremely stable rotation of these 'cosmic clocks' has...
Latest Neutron star Reference Libraries
X-Ray Astronomy -- Although the more energetic X-rays (E > 30 keV) can penetrate the air at least for distances of a few meters (they would never have been detected and medical X-ray machines would not work if this was not the case) the Earth's atmosphere is thick enough that virtually none are able to penetrate from outer space all the way to the Earth's surface. X-rays in the 0.5 - 5 keV range, where most celestial sources give off the bulk of their energy, can be stopped by a few...
X-ray Pulsar -- This dramatic artist's vision shows a city-sized neutron star centered in a disk of hot plasma drawn from its enfeebled red companion star. Ravenously accreting material from the disk, the neutron star spins faster and faster emitting powerful particle beams and pulses of X-rays as it rotates 400 times a second. Could such a bizarre and inhospitable star system really exist in our Universe? Based on data from the orbiting Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite,...
Supernova -- A supernova is a star that increases its brightness drastically within a matter of days, making it appear as if a "new" star was born (hence "nova"). The "super" prefix distinguishes it from a mere nova, which also involves a star increasing in brightness, though to a lesser extent and through a much different mechanism. Astronomers have classified supernovae in several classes, according to the lines of different elements that appear in their spectra. The first...
Strange Matter -- Strange matter (also known as quark matter) is an ultra-dense phase of matter that is theorized to form inside particularly massive neutron stars (which are then known as "strange stars" or "quark stars"). It's theorized that when neutronium is put under sufficient pressure due to the gravitation of a large neutron star, the individual neutrons break down and their constituent quarks form strange matter. Strange matter is composed of strange quarks bound to each...
Pulsar -- A pulsar, which originally stood for pulsating radio source, is a rapidly rotating neutron star, whose electromagnetic radiation is observed in regularly spaced interval, or pulses. Pulsars are closely related to magnetars, the main difference being the strenght of the object's magnetic field. History Pulsars were discovered by Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish in 1967 while they were using a radio array to study the scintillation of quasars. They found a very regular...
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