Latest X-ray pulsar Stories

GREENBELT, Md., April 5, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), which NASA recently selected as its next Explorer Mission of Opportunity, will gather scientific data revealing the physics of the densest matter allowed in nature, and--from the same platform--will demonstrate a groundbreaking navigation technology that could revolutionize the agency's ability to travel to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. (Logo:...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new model developed by researchers at the University of Southampton explains how the spin of a pulsar slows down as the star gets older. A pulsar is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that forms from the remains of a supernova which emits a rotating beam of electromagnetic radiation. Pulsars rotate at very stable speeds, but slow down as they emit radiation and lose their energy. Researchers now say that they have found a...

Stellar astrophysics helps to explain the behavior of fast rotating neutron stars in binary systems Pulsars are among the most exotic celestial bodies known. They have diameters of about 20 kilometers, but at the same time roughly the mass of our sun. A sugar-cube sized piece of its ultra-compact matter on the Earth would weigh hundreds of millions of tons. A sub-class of them, known as millisecond pulsars, spin up to several hundred times per second around their own axes. Previous...

Astronomers have discovered a very slowly rotating X-ray pulsar still embedded in the remnant of the supernova that created it. This unusual object was detected on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, using data from a number of telescopes, including ESA's XMM-Newton. A puzzling mismatch between the fairly young age of the supernova remnant and the slow rotation of the pulsar, which would normally indicate a much older object, raises interesting...

Neutron stars have been called the zombies of the cosmos, shining on even though they're technically dead, and occasionally feeding on a neighboring star if it gets too close. They are born when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses under its own gravity, crushing the matter in its core and blasting away its outer layers in a supernova explosion that can outshine a billion suns. The core, compressed by gravity to inconceivable density – one teaspoon would weigh about a billion...

Astronomers at the universities of Southampton and Oxford have found evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. Their finding also suggests that each variety is produced by a different kind of supernova event. Neutron stars are the last stage in the evolution of many massive stars. They represent the most extreme form of matter: the mass of a single neutron star exceeds that of the entire sun, but...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An international team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these objects form. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) At the same time, another team has located nine new gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi data, using improved analytical techniques. A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits...

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...

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...