Millisecond pulsar in spin mode
Thursday, November 3, 2011 - 14:31
in Astronomy & Space
Astronomers have tracked down the first gamma-ray pulsar in a globular cluster of stars. It is around 27,000 light years away and thus also holds the distance record in this class of objects. Moreover, its high luminosity indicates that J1823-3021A is the youngest millisecond pulsar found to date, and that its magnetic field is much stronger than theoretically predicted. This therefore suggests the existence of a new population of such extreme objects. The discovery was made by Paulo Freire and an international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. The researchers evaluated data from the Fermi space telescope.