JPL: NuSTAR Discovers Shockingly Bright Dead Star

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JPL: NuSTAR Discovers Shockingly Bright Dead Star

Post by bystander » Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:22 pm

NuSTAR Discovers Shockingly Bright Dead Star
NASA | JPL-Caltech | NuSTAR | 2014 Oct 08
Image[c]High-energy X-rays streaming from a rare and mighty pulsar (magenta), the brightest
found to date, can be seen in this new image combining multi-wavelength data from
three telescopes.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SAO/NOAO[/c]

Astronomers have found a pulsating, dead star beaming with the energy of about 10 million suns. This is the brightest pulsar - a dense stellar remnant left over from a supernova explosion - ever recorded. The discovery was made with NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR.

"You might think of this pulsar as the 'Mighty Mouse' of stellar remnants," said Fiona Harrison, the NuSTAR principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It has all the power of a black hole, but with much less mass."

The discovery appears in a new report in the Thursday, Oct. 9, issue of the journal Nature.

The surprising find is helping astronomers better understand mysterious sources of blinding X-rays, called ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). Until now, all ULXs were thought to be black holes. The new data from NuSTAR show at least one ULX, about 12 million light-years away in the galaxy Messier 82 (M82), is actually a pulsar. ...

NuSTAR Discovers Impossibly Bright Dead Star
California Institute of Technology | 2014 Oct 08

An ultraluminous X-ray source powered by an accreting neutron star - Matteo Bachetti et al
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LLNL: Dead Star Shines On

Post by bystander » Thu Oct 09, 2014 9:49 pm

Dead Star Shines On
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | 2014 Oct 09
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Re: JPL: NuSTAR Discovers Shockingly Bright Dead Star

Post by bystander » Mon Oct 13, 2014 6:15 pm

M82X-2: Suspected Black Hole Unmasked as Ultraluminous Pulsar
NASA | SAO | MSFC | CXC | 2014 Oct 08
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Kavli: Tremendously Bright Pulsar May Be One of Many

Post by bystander » Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:03 am

Tremendously Bright Pulsar May Be One of Many
Kavli Institute | via EurekAlert | 2014 Oct 27

Recently, a team of astronomers reported discovering a pulsating star that appears to shine with the energy of 10 million suns. The find, which was announced in Nature, is the brightest pulsar – a type of rotating neutron star that emits a bright beam of energy that regularly sweeps past Earth like a lighthouse beam – ever seen. But what are the odds finding another one?

According to one of the paper's authors, chances are good now that they know what to look for.

Professor Deepto Chakrabarty of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says he is optimistic that astronomers will find additional ultra-bright pulsars now that they know such objects exist.

Bright Star Shines Light on Mysterious X-ray Sources:
A Q&A with MKI’s Deepto Chakrabarty

Kavli Institute | 2014 Oct 26

A newly discovered pulsar, the brightest ever discovered, raises questions about a mysterious category of cosmic objects called ultraluminous X-ray sources. Researcher Deepto Chakrabarty discusses the discovery and how to go about aligning our understanding of the universe with this new revelation.
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alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.
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Re: JPL: NuSTAR Discovers Shockingly Bright Dead Star

Post by saturno2 » Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:49 am

A pulsar super bright and large amount of energy
Very very interesting

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