And this object, this pulsar in the Crab Nebula is radiating copious amounts of x-rays, of gamma rays.
The fast-spinning star is a pulsar, a superdense chunk of matter left over when a massive star explodes, then collapses in on itself.
Astronomers calculate that the pulsar lies about 1, 600 light years from Earth and is about half a million years old, which makes it roughly middle-aged for this type of object.
We know the period of the pulsar to a very high degree of accuracy.
Such "pulsar glitches" likely result from brief interactions between the neutron star's solid crust and superfluid interior.
Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory found that this pulsar, known as PSR J0357+3205 (or PSR J0357 for short), apparently has a long, bright X-ray tail streaming away from it.
Binary star systems containing a pulsar and an accretion disk occur beginning at about 14:30.
And we do know that it is this star that is the pulsar and we know that it is not that star.
This pulsar alone, however, generates the six times 31 watts.
Or you could hop in a starship and cruise 4, 000 light years over to a dead star called pulsar J1719-1438.
The position of the pulsar at the upper right end of the tail is seen by mousing over the image.
This star is clearly not the pulsar as it is about equally bright on both exposures.
The white source near the center of the image is a dense, rapidly rotating neutron star, or pulsar, all that remains of a core-collapse supernova explosion.
The Crab pulsar, the best-known example of a bright pulsar wind nebula, is about 950 years old.
They discovered a new pulsar wake.
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