ESA: The Brightest, Furthest Pulsar in the Universe

[bystander]

The Brightest, Furthest Pulsar in the Universe
ESA Science & Technology | XMM-Newton | 2017 Feb 21

ESA's XMM-Newton has found a pulsar – the spinning remains of a once-massive star – that is a thousand times brighter than previously thought possible.

[img3="NGC 5907 X-1: Record-Breaking Pulsar
Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton; NASA/Chandra and SDSS"]http://sci.esa.int/science-e-media/img/ ... -1_625.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

The pulsar is also the most distant of its kind ever detected, with its light travelling 50 million light-years before being detected by XMM-Newton.

Pulsars are spinning, magnetised neutron stars that sweep regular pulses of radiation in two symmetrical beams across the cosmos. If suitably aligned with Earth these beams are like a lighthouse beacon appearing to flash on and off as it rotates. They were once massive stars that exploded as a powerful supernova at the end of their natural life, before becoming small and extraordinarily dense stellar corpses.

This X-ray source is the most luminous of its type detected to date: it is 10 times brighter than the previous record holder. In one second it emits the same amount of energy released by our Sun in 3.5 years.

XMM-Newton observed the object several times in the last 13 years, with the discovery a result of a systematic search for pulsars in the data archive -- its 1.13-second periodic pulses giving it away.

The signal was also identified in NASA’s NuSTAR archive data, providing additional information. ...

The discovery was made as a result of the "Exploring the X-ray Transient and variable Sky" (EXTraS) project.

An Accreting Pulsar with Extreme Properties Drives an Ultraluminous X-ray Source in NGC 5907 - Gian Luca Israel et al

• Science 355(6327):817 (24 Feb 2017) DOI: 10.1126/science.aai8635
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1609.07375 > 23 Sep 2016 (v1), 26 Feb 2017 (v2)

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=27334

[BDanielMayfield]

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=27334

Was that what you ment to link to bystander? And, how do you possibly keep track of so many thousands of topics?

Bruce

[bystander]

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=27334

Was that what you ment to link to bystander? And, how do you possibly keep track of so many thousands of topics?

Yes, it was what I found for NGC 5907 on the Asterisk.

I don't keep track of them, I use Google Advanced Search on the Asterisk domain.

[BDanielMayfield]

Ah. This galaxy NGC 5907 gets around then. It sports an unusually vast collisional debris ring AND the brightest pulsar in the known universe.

Thanks

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=27334

Was that what you meant to link to bystander? And, how do you possibly keep track of so many thousands of topics?

Yes, it was what I found for NGC 5907 on the Asterisk. I don't keep track of them, I use Google Advanced Search.

Here they had this bright "lighthouse beacon"
and still there was a galactic collision

• [It aint a fit night out for man nor beast ]

[bystander]

NuSTAR Helps Find Universe's Brightest Pulsars
NASA | JPL-Caltech | NuSTAR | 2017 Feb 28

There’s a new record holder for brightest pulsar ever found -- and astronomers are still trying to figure out how it can shine so brightly. It’s now part of a small group of mysterious bright pulsars that are challenging astronomers to rethink how pulsars accumulate, or accrete, material.

A pulsar is a spinning, magnetized neutron star that sweeps regular pulses of radiation in two symmetrical beams across the cosmos. If aligned well enough with Earth, these beams act like a lighthouse beacon -- appearing to flash on and off as the pulsar rotates. Pulsars were previously massive stars that exploded in powerful supernovae, leaving behind these small, dense stellar corpses.

The brightest pulsar, as reported in the journal Science, is called NGC 5907 ULX. In one second, it emits the same amount of energy as our Sun does in three-and-a-half years. The European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite found the pulsar and, independently, NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) mission also detected the signal. This pulsar is 50 million light-years away, which means its light dates back to a time before humans roamed Earth. It is also the farthest known neutron star. ...