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VIRTUALISATION Chandra hands us unusual image of pulsar B1509
VIRTUALISATION Chandra hands us unusual image of pulsar B1509 | Chandra hands us unusual image of pulsar B1509 |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Wednesday, 08 April 2009 | |
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The very unusual image is found at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics website “PSR B1509-58: A Young Pulsar Shows its Hand.” The dense pulsar is only about 12 miles (19 kilometers) in diameter, but has produced this hand-shaped nebula, made from x-ray radiation (light), which is about 150 light-years in length. B1509 is also only about 1,700 years old and located about 17,000 light-years from Earth. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star that has resulted from the death of a super-massive star by a fierce explosion called a supernova. It is rotating once in about 7 seconds, a very fast spinning pulsar. The supernova remnant (SNR), the burnt out star, is called MSH 15-52 (G 320.4-01.2). [ArXiv: “Chandra observations of PSR B1509-58 and Supernova Remnant G320.4-1.2”; and Astronomy & Astrophysics: “On the age of PSR B 1509-58”] Because of its rapid rotation about its axis, it is spewing out a lot of energy into space. Some of this energy has been loosely formed into a “cosmic hand” of sorts. Page two concludes. |
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