Pulsar Racing Through Space Reveals Comet-Like Trail

[telfrow]

<p>A team led by Dr. Patrizia Caraveo of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan discovered this cometary trail with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Archive. The discovery follows the team's discovery in 2003 using ESA's XMM-Newton of Geminga's twin X-ray tails stretching for billions of chilometers. <br /><br />Together, these observations provide unique insight into the contents and density of the interstellar "ocean" Geminga is plowing through, as well as the physics of Geminga itself. Not only is Geminga close, only about 500 light years from Earth, it is cutting across our line of sight, offering a spectacular view of a pulsar in motion. <br /><br />"Geminga is the only isolated pulsar we know of showing both a small comet-like trail and a larger tail structure," said Dr. Andrea De Luca of INAF's Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, lead author on an article about this discovery in Astronomy & Astrophysics. "This jettison from Geminga's journey through interstellar space provides unprecedented information about the physics of pulsars." <br /><br />A pulsar is a type of rapidly spinning neutron star that emits steady pulses of radiation with each rotation, funnelled along strong magnetic field lines, much like a lighthouse beam sweeping across space. A neutron star is the core remains of an exploded star once at least eight times as massive as the sun. <br /><br />These dense stars, only about 20 kilometers across, still contain roughly the mass of the sun. Neutron stars contain the densest material known. Like many neutron stars, Geminga got a "kick" from the explosion that created it and has been flying through space like a cannonball ever since. <br /><br />De Luca said that Geminga's complex phenomenology of tails and a trail must be from high-energy electrons escaping the pulsar magnetosphere following paths clearly driven by the pulsar's motion in the interstellar medium.<br /><br />Full story here:</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[jatslo]

"interstellar medium" Coolness. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

 

[bonzelite]

they avoid outright talking about or mentioning plasma. so i won't either. <br /><br />