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Astronomers have managed to locate the youngest Milky Way pulsar, NASA announced yesterday. Nicknamed PSR J1846-0258, the pulsar was sighted in one of the supernova remnants of our galaxy – found 19,000 light-years away from our planet, in the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle).
This exciting discovery – first detailed in a study published earlier this year in The astrophysical journal – Could shed more light on supernova explosions and new beginnings born from the death of a stellar giant.
What are pulsars and how are they formed?
When massive stars reach the end of their life cycle, they come out en masse. When they are running out of fuel, their core will collapse and they will explode into a supernova, leaving behind a rich, laden material with chemical elements.
The resulting structure is known as the supernova remnant – a floating mass of remaining debris, the Inquisitr previously reported, this ends up completely forming something new.
Gravity tablets, protons and electrons of these dead stars turn into neutrons to give birth to neutron stars, stellar objects the size of a city containing more mass than the sun.
according to Space, the neutron stars have a mass about 1.4 times greater than that of the sun, packed in a small space measuring about 20 km.
Telescopic view of the Veil Nebula, a 5,000-year-old supernova remnant at 1,470 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan).
Nico Schmedemann
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Shutterstock
Highly magnetized, fast-rotating neutron stars are called pulsars – because of their incredibly fast rotation, which makes them appear as luminous pulses in the sky when they are observed from Earth.
From the ashes of exploding stars, these stellar "phoenixes" were discovered for the first time in the 1960s, Inquisitr recently reported. Since then, astronomers have found more than 2,000 pulsars, the youngest of the galaxy being now confirmed.
3D illustration of a pulsar or superdense super fast spinning star.
Jurik Peter
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Shutterstock
The youngest pulsar of the Milky Way
The most recent pulsar of our galaxy was detected inside a remnant of supernova called Kes 75. The pulsar is about 500 years old and was spotted with the help of the observatory NASA's X-ray Chandra.
After studying the Kes 75 over a 16-year period – in 2000, 2006, 2009 and 2016 – Chandra discovered the pulsar tucked into the rest of the supernova by capturing his X-ray emissions. Chandra's observations revealed that The superdense star is enveloped by a pulsar wind nebula (PWN), a magnetized bubble of high energy particles floating inside the rest of the supernova.
"We directly confirm that Kes 75 contains the youngest PWN known, and therefore the youngest known pulsar," wrote the authors of the study.
An amazing photo of the pulsar was unveiled yesterday by NASA, accompanied by a press release detailing how the object was found.
This vestige in bright colors is Kes 75, a star until it explodes in a supernova ????, 500 years ago. Astronomers used the data from @ChandraXRay to confirm that it contains the youngest known pulsar of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Read about the disappearance of the star: https://t.co/ikAsDTEOIJ pic.twitter.com/wg3Zh7JTja
– NASA (@NASA) October 18, 2018
The photo represents a composite image created from data collected in 2006 and 2016, details the website of the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
"In this composite image of Kes 75, the high-energy X-rays observed by Chandra are colored blue and highlight the pulsar nebula surrounding the pulsar, while the low-energy X-rays appear in purple and show the debris of the explosion, "explained NASA officials.
"The fast rotation and strong magnetic field of the pulsar generated a wind of energetic matter and antimatter particles escaping from the pulsar at a speed close to that of light."
What is remarkable about this pulsar nebula is that it grows continuously, at a million meters per second or more than two million miles per hour. At the same time, its brightness decreased by 10% between 2009 and 2016, especially in its northern region – one of the brightest nodes of the PWN having grown 30% less since 2006.
These rapid changes intrigued astronomers, who risked explaining the unusual characteristics of the pulsar.
"We suggest that the PWN develops in an asymmetric nickel bubble in a conventional IIP-type supernova," the researchers wrote in the study, showing that the supernova explosion was filling the nickel bubble and ferrous radioactive iron.
"Chandra's data also gives an insight into the very heart of the exploded star and the chemical elements it has created," Observatory officials wrote yesterday: Twitter.
X-ray of the rest of the Kes 75 supernova showing the pulsar tucked inside.
NASA / CXC / GSFC / F.P.Gavriil et al.
Although the new pulsar was formed relatively recently, there is no record of the celestial event that triggered its creation, because no one on Earth saw it happen at that time.
Unlike other more famous cases, like that of the Eta Carinae double star, much closer, detailed in a previous Inquisitr Article – The explosion that created Kes 75 and PSR J1846-0258 did not light up the sky above our planet. As NASA points out, the dense interstellar gas and dust floating in this part of the Milky Way "would have made it too dark to be seen from the Earth centuries ago."
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