ASTRON: LOFAR Radio Telescope Discovers Record-Breaking Pulsar

[bystander]

LOFAR Radio Telescope Discovers Record-Breaking Pulsar
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) | 2017 Sep 05

The Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), a network of thousands of linked radio antennas,
primarily located in the Netherlands, has discovered two new millisecond pulsars by
investigating previously unknown gamma-ray sources uncovered by NASA's Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Credits: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration/ASTRON

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Astronomers have discovered two rapidly rotating radio pulsars with the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope in the Netherlands by investigating unknown gamma-ray sources uncovered by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The first pulsar (PSR J1552+5437) rotates 412 times per second. The second pulsar (PSR J0952-0607) rotates 707 times per second, making it the fastest-spinning pulsar in the disk of our Galaxy and the second-fastest known spinning-pulsar overall.

Pulsars are neutron stars, the remnants of massive stars that exploded as a supernova, which emit radio waves from their magnetic poles that sweep past Earth as they rotate. As a result, they act like lighthouses where we see pulses of radio emission for each rotation. Neutron stars are the size of a city packed in more mass than the Sun. That’s why they are used to study the behaviour of matter under extreme densities. By studying the fastest-spinning pulsars, astronomers hope to discover more about the internal structure of neutron stars and the extremes of the Universe.

Pulsars shine the brightest at low frequency radio waves and this makes LOFAR an ideal telescope for studying them. “However, finding pulsars with LOFAR is extra hard work because gas and dust between stars disrupts low frequency radio waves,” says Cees Bassa from ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. That’s why astronomers usually look for pulsars at higher radio frequencies.

Bassa and his colleagues have now found a way to overcome this problem. “We have developed a new processing technique, which uses graphics cards (originally designed for gaming) in the large DRAGNET computer cluster in Groningen to process the LOFAR data.” This cluster is funded through an ERC starting grant to Jason Hessels from ASTRON and the University of Amsterdam. ...

'Extreme' Telescopes Find the Second-fastest-spinning Pulsar
NASA | GSFC | Fermi | 2017 Sep 05

A Millisecond Pulsar Discovery in a Survey of Unidentified Fermi γ-Ray Sources with LOFAR - Z. Pleunis et al

• Astrophysical Journal Letters 846(2):L19 (2017 Sep 10) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa83ff
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1709.01452 > 05 Sep 2017

LOFAR Discovery of the Fastest-spinning Millisecond Pulsar in the Galactic Field - C. G. Bassa et al

• Astrophysical Journal Letters 846(2):L20 (2017 Sep 10) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa8400
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1709.01453 > 05 Sep 2017

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[MargaritaMc]

Thanks for putting the link to the AAS Nova topic, bystander. I had been scratching my head trying to recall where I'd read about black widow pulsars.