High school researchers discover pulsar with widest orbit ever detected
High school researchers discover pulsar with widest orbit ever detected
Posted on 2 May 2015 by Astronomy Now
A team of highly determined high school students discovered a never-before-seen pulsar by painstakingly analysing data from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Further observations by astronomers using the GBT revealed that this pulsar has the widest orbit of any around a neutron star and is part of only a handful of double neutron star systems.
This impressive find will help astronomers better understand how binary neutron star systems form and evolve.
Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, the superdense remains of massive stars that have exploded as supernovas. As a pulsar spins, lighthouse-like beams of radio waves, streaming from the poles of its powerful magnetic field, sweep through space. When one of these beams sweeps across the Earth, radio telescopes can capture the pulse of radio waves.
“Pulsars are some of the most extreme objects in the universe,” said Joe Swiggum, a graduate student in physics and astronomy at West Virginia University in Morgantown and lead author on a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal explaining this result and its implications. “The students’ discovery shows one of these objects in a really unique set of circumstances.”
More:
http://astronomynow.com/2015/05/02/high-school-researchers-discover-pulsar-with-widest-orbit-ever-detected/
