NASA | JPL-Caltech | NuSTAR | 2017 Mar 23
[img3="NASA's Nuclear Spectroscope Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has identified a candidate pulsar in Andromeda -- the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. This likely pulsar is brighter at high energies than the Andromeda galaxy's entire black hole population. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/JHU"]https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/nustar/ ... 323-16.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]The Milky Way's close neighbor, Andromeda, features a dominant source of high-energy X-ray emission, but its identity was mysterious until now. As reported in a new study, NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) mission has pinpointed an object responsible for this high-energy radiation.
The object, called Swift J0042.6+4112, is a possible pulsar, the dense remnant of a dead star that is highly magnetized and spinning, researchers say. This interpretation is based on its emission in high-energy X-rays, which NuSTAR is uniquely capable of measuring. The object's spectrum is very similar to known pulsars in the Milky Way.
It is likely in a binary system, in which material from a stellar companion gets pulled onto the pulsar, spewing high-energy radiation as the material heats up. ...
This candidate pulsar is shown as a blue dot in a NuSTAR X-ray image of Andromeda (also called M31), where the color blue is chosen to represent the highest-energy X-rays. It appears brighter in high-energy X-rays than anything else in the galaxy. ...
Identification of the Hard X-ray Source Dominating the E > 25 keV Emission of the Nearby Galaxy M31 - M. Yukita et al
- Astrophysical Journal 838(1):47 (20 Mar 2017) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa62a3
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1703.07318 > 21 Mar 2017