ESA Science & Technology | XMM-Newton | 2016 Mar 31
[c][attachment=0]Andromeda_Galaxy_in_infrared_and_X-rays_625[1].jpg[/attachment][/c][hr][/hr]Decades of searching in the Milky Way's nearby 'twin' galaxy Andromeda have finally paid off, with the discovery of an elusive breed of stellar corpse, a neutron star, by ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope.
Andromeda, or M31, is a popular target among astronomers. Under clear, dark skies it is even visible to the naked eye. Its proximity and similarity in structure to our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, make it an important natural laboratory for astronomers. It has been extensively studied for decades by telescopes covering the whole electromagnetic spectrum.
Despite being extremely well studied, one particular class of object had never been detected: spinning neutron stars. ...
Binary systems hosting a neutron star like this are quite common in our own Galaxy, but regular signals from such a pairing had never before been seen in Andromeda.
Now, astronomers systematically searching through the archives of data from XMM-Newton X-ray telescope have uncovered the signal of an unusual source fitting the bill of a fast-spinning neutron star.
It spins every 1.2 seconds, and appears to be feeding on a neighbouring star that orbits it every 1.3 days. ...
While the precise nature of the system remains unclear, the data imply that it is unusual and exotic. ...
EXTraS discovery of an 1.2-s X-ray pulsar in M 31 - P. Esposito et al
- Monthly Notices of the RAS Letters 457(1):L5 (2016 Mar 21) DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slv194
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1512.00467 > 01 Dec 2015