Magnetic field lights up a stellar graveyard

The core of the dead star becomes a pulsar - a rapidly rotating, highly magnetized pulsating star the size of a city, which spews out a wind of fast-moving, electrically charged particles. In the past two decades, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has enabled close-up views of their nebulae5, bu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNature (London) Vol. 612; no. 7941; pp. 641 - 642
Main Author Safi-Harb, Samar
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group 22.12.2022
Subjects
Astronomers
Celestial bodies
Cemeteries
Charged particles
High energy astronomy
Magnetic fields
Middle age
Moon
Pulsars
Radiation
Radio sources (astronomy)
Radio telescopes
Space telescopes
Stars & galaxies
Stellar magnetic fields
Stellar rotation
Supernovae
Telescopes
Wind
X ray telescopes
X-ray astronomy
X-rays
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Summary:The core of the dead star becomes a pulsar - a rapidly rotating, highly magnetized pulsating star the size of a city, which spews out a wind of fast-moving, electrically charged particles. In the past two decades, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has enabled close-up views of their nebulae5, but direct imaging of the magnetic fields responsible for their high-energy radiation has not been possible. Astronomers had previously imaged magnetic fields in astronomical sources using radio and optical telescopes, but these types of radiation are subject to rotation effects and absorption by dust, respectively, both of which hinder observation. By contrast, X-ray polarization offers a direct probe of the geometry of the magnetic field in the acceleration zone, where the pulsar dumps its particle wind and emits high-energy radiation.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-News-1
content type line 14
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/d41586-022-04445-2