Ultra Fast Pulsar
Explanation:
Pulsars are rotating
neutron stars, born in the violent
crucibles of supernova explosions.
Like cosmic lighthouses, beams of radiation from surface hotspots sweep
past our viewpoint creating pulses which reveal the rotation rates
of these incredibly
dense stellar corpses.
The most famous pulsar of all is found in the nearby supernova
remnant,
the Crab Nebula.
The Crab's young pulsar is fast.
Rotating at 33 times a second,
its radiation energizes the surrounding
gaseous stellar debris.
But using
archival observations from orbiting X-ray telescopes,
astronomers have recently identified another "Crab-like" pulsar
that is even faster.
Located in the
Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC),
X-ray pulses from this newly discovered pulsar,
in the supernova remnant N157B,
indicate an even faster rotation rate - 62 times a second -
making it
the fastest known pulsar associated with a supernova remnant.
This contoured, false color X-ray image of
a portion of the LMC
shows the location of N157B along with
the core of the nearby
hot star cluster R136,
and the site of another Crab-like pulsar in SNR 0540-69.3
(rotating a mere 20 times a second).
The image is about 1,500 light-years across.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
