Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) |
Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) | 2018 Oct 23
An international team of astronomers have discovered the slowest-spinning radio pulsar yet known. The neutron star spins around only once every 23.5 seconds and is a challenge for theory to explain. The researchers, including astronomers at the University of Manchester, ASTRON and the University of Amsterdam, carried out their observations with the LOFAR telescope, whose core is located in the Netherlands. ...
Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that produce electromagnetic radiation in beams that emanate from their magnetic poles. These “cosmic lighthouses” are born when a massive star explodes in a supernova. Thereafter, a super-dense ball of material is left behind – rapidly spinning, and with a diameter of only about 20 kilometers. The fastest-spinning pulsar rotates once each 1.4 milliseconds. Until now, the slowest-spinning pulsar known had a period of 8.5 seconds. Now researchers have discovered a much slower, 23.5-second, pulsar, which is located in the constellation Cassiopeia. ...
The astronomers discovered this new pulsar during the LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey. This survey is searching for pulsars in the Northern sky. Each survey snapshot of the sky lasts for one hour. This is much longer compared to previous surveys, and gave the sensitivity needed to discover this surprising pulsar.
Not only did the astronomers 'hear' the regular ticks of the pulsar signal, they could also 'see' the pulsar in LOFAR’s imaging survey. ... The pulsar is approximately 14 million years old, but still has a strong magnetic field. ...
LOFAR Discovery of a 23.5 s Radio Pulsar ~ C.M. Tan et al
- Astrophysical Journal 866(1):54 (2018 Oct 10) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aade88
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1809.00965 > 04 Sep 2018