NEW YORK: Astronomers are expecting a spectacular energetic fireworks show when a pulsar will pass through a broad disk of gas and dust around its partner star in about three years.
First spotted by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2009, the pulsar known as PSR J2032+4127, is a highly magnetized neutron star weighing nearly twice as much as the Sun that spins 7 times a second, but is only about 20 kilometres across.
Dedicated follow-up radio observations led by a team at The University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, using the 76-m Lovell Radio Telescope, now show that the pulsar travels in an extreme orbit around a companion star. This orbit will, in early 2018, plunge the pulsar through a broad disk of gas and dust round its partner, generating a spectacular series of explosions which will create a range of emissions from radio waves to gamma rays.
Precision timing of its radio flashes indicates that it is falling rapidly under the gravitational pull of a massive young star known as MT91 213, a stellar type known as a Be star. The orbit derived from these observations has a period of about 25 years and shows that the pulsar will pass very close to the star in less than 3 years time.
MT91 213 is fifteen times the mass of the Sun and shines 10,000 times brighter. Be stars are characterized by strong outflows, called stellar winds, and large encircling disks of material. As the pulsar speeds around this inferno, astronomers will be able to use it as a probe to measure the star’s gravity, magnetic field, the density of the wind flowing from the star and the structure of its disk.
Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology
WASHINGTON: Electric carmaker Tesla announced Sunday it was upgrading its Autopilot software to use more advanced radar technology. In a...
