Pulsars Archives

February 1, 2023February 1, 2023 by Scott Alan Johnston

Soon Every Spacecraft can Navigate the Solar System Autonomously Using Pulsars

If you want to know where you are in space, you’d better bring along a map. But it’s a little more complicated than riding shotgun on a family road trip.

Spacecraft navigation beyond Earth orbit is usually carried out by mission control. A series of radio communication arrays across the planet, known as the Deep Space Network, allows operators to check in with space probes and update their navigational status. The system works, but it could be better. What if a spacecraft could autonomously determine its position, without needing to phone home? That’s been a dream of aerospace engineers for a long time, and it’s getting close to fruition.

Pulsars are the key.

January 12, 2023January 12, 2023 by Matt Williams

Astronomers use the World's Biggest Radio Telescope to map new Features of the Milky Way

Artist impression of a fast radio burst. Credit: Danielle Futselaar

Despite everything astronomers have learned about the nature and structure of galaxies, there are still mysteries about the Milky Way. The reason for this is simple: since we are embedded in the Milky Way’s disk, we have difficulty mapping it and observing it as a whole. It’s also very challenging to observe the center of the galaxy, what lies beyond it, and features in the disk itself because of all the gas and dust between stars- the Interstellar Medium (ISM). However, by observing the Milky Way in the non-visible spectrum (radio, x-ray, gamma-ray, etc.), astronomers can see more of what’s out there.

There’s also the spectral line that corresponds to the emission frequency (1420 MHz) of cold neutral hydrogen gas (HI), which makes up the majority of the ISM. Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) – the most powerful radio telescope in the world near Guizhou, China – a team of scientists located more than 500 new faint pulsars. During the survey, the team simultaneously recorded the spectral line data with high spectral and spatial resolution, making it an extremely valuable resource for studying the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy and the life cycle of its stars.

November 30, 2022December 1, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

Do Exoplanet Scientists Have Favorite Exoplanets?

Artist rendition of the PSR B1257+12. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt)

Exoplanets have become quite the sensation over the last decade-plus, with scientists confirming new exoplanets on a regular basis thanks to NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions, along with the James Webb Space Telescope recently examining exoplanet atmospheres, as well. It’s because of these discoveries that exoplanet science has turned into an exciting field of intrigue and wonder, but do the very same scientists who study these wonderful and mysterious worlds have their own favorite exoplanets? As it turns out, four such exoplanet scientists, sometimes referred to as “exoplaneteers”, were kind enough to share their favorites with Universe Today!

June 24, 2022June 24, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Find a Brand new Pulsar That's Probably Less Than 14 Years old

Artist view of the neutron star VT 1137-0337. Credit: Melissa Weiss, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Neutron stars are dense remnants of large stars. They are the collapsed cores of stars formed during a supernova explosion. While we know generally how they form, we are still learning how they evolve, particularly when they are young. But that’s starting to change thanks to large sky surveys, which have allowed astronomers to observe a neutron star that could be little more than a decade old.

June 2, 2022June 2, 2022 by Matt Williams

A Pulsar has Been Found Turning so Slowly Astronomers Didn't Even Think it was Possible: Once Every 76 Seconds

Astronomy is progressing rapidly these days, thanks in part to how advances in one area can contribute to progress in another. For instance, improved optics, instruments, and data processing methods have allowed astronomers to push the boundaries of optical and infrared to gravitational wave (GW) astronomy. Radio astronomy is also advancing considerably thanks to arrays like the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, which will join with observatories in Australia in the near future to create the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

In particular, radio astronomers are using next-generation instruments to study phenomena like Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and neutron stars. Recently, an international team of scientists led by the University of Manchester discovered a strange radio-emitting neutron star with a powerful magnetic field (a “magnetar”) and an extremely slow rotational period of 76 seconds. This discovery could have significant implications for radio astronomy and hints at a possible connection between different types of neutron stars and FRBs.

May 7, 2022May 7, 2022 by Allen Versfeld

Traveling the Solar System with Pulsar Navigation

A pulsar with its magnetic field lines illustrated. The beams emitting from the poles are what washes over our detectors as the dead star spins.

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have found a way for travelers through the Solar System to work out exactly where they are, without needing help from ground-based observers on Earth. They have refined the pulsar navigation technique, which uses X-ray signals from distant pulsars, in a way similar to how GPS uses signals from a constellation of specialized satellites, to calculate an exact position .

March 17, 2022March 17, 2022 by Evan Gough

A Pulsar is Blasting out Jets of Matter and Antimatter

This image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes shows an extremely long beam, or filament, of matter and antimatter extending from a relatively tiny pulsar, as reported in our latest press release. With its tremendous scale, this beam may help explain the surprisingly large numbers of positrons, the antimatter counterparts to electrons, scientists have detected throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries; Optical: NSF/AURA/Gemini Consortium

Why is there so much antimatter in the Universe? Ordinary matter is far more plentiful than antimatter, but scientists keep detecting more and more antimatter in the form of positrons. More positrons reach Earth than standard models predict. Where do they come from?

Scientists think pulsars are one source, and a new study strengthens that idea.

March 4, 2022March 4, 2022 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Scan 800 Pulsars to See If Any of Them Have Planets

Lich (PSR B1257+12) is a pulsar 2,300 ly away in the constellation of Virgo - 20 km in diameter, formed 2 billion years ago by two white dwarfs merging with each other - Has three known planets, named Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor - Both the first extrasolar planets and the first pulsar planets to be discovered - Draugr is the lowest-mass planet yet discovered by any observational technique (twice the mass of Earth's moon.) Image Credit: By Pablo Carlos Budassi - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94333766

Astronomers discovered the first exoplanets in 1992. They found a pair of them orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 about 2300 light-years from the Sun. Two years later they discovered the third planet in the system.

Now a team of astronomers are trying to duplicate that feat by searching 800 known pulsars for exoplanets.

December 14, 2021December 14, 2021 by Matt Williams

Twin Stars Prove Einstein at Least 99.99% Right

Artistic impression of the Double Pulsar system, where two active pulsars orbit each other in just 147 min. The orbital motion of these extremely dense neutrons star causes a number of relativistic effects, including the creation of ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves. The gravitational waves carry away energy from the systems which shrinks by about 7mm per days as a result. The corresponding measurement agrees with the prediction of general relativity within 0.013%. The picture at high resolution and two alternative versions (1b, 1c) are accessible in the left column. [less] © Michael Kramer/MPIfR

More than a hundred years have passed since Einstein formalized his theory of General Relativity (GR), the geometric theory of gravitation that revolutionized our understanding of the Universe. And yet, astronomers are still subjecting it to rigorous tests, hoping to find deviations from this established theory. The reason is simple: any indication of physics beyond GR would open new windows onto the Universe and help resolve some of the deepest mysteries about the cosmos.

One of the most rigorous tests ever was recently conducted by an international team of astronomers led by Michael Kramer of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany. Using seven radio telescopes from across the world, Kramer and his colleagues observed a unique pair of pulsars for 16 years. In the process, they observed effects predicted by GR for the first time, and with an accuracy of at least 99.99%!

December 10, 2021December 10, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

NASA Launches a New X-ray Observatory

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches with NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft onboard from Launch Complex 39A, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The IXPE spacecraft is the first satellite dedicated to measuring the polarization of X-rays from a variety of cosmic sources, such as black holes and neutron stars. Launch occurred at 1 a.m. EST. Credits: NASA/Joel Kowsky

A new mission has launched to study some the most intriguing secrets of the universe. No, not THAT spacecraft (JWST is scheduled for launch on December 22). Another new and exciting mission is called Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) and it will allow scientists to explore the hidden details of some of the most extreme and high-energy objects in the cosmos, such as black holes, neutron stars, pulsars and dozens of other objects.