Millisecond pulsars tagged posts

A team of researchers, including UvA physicists and astronomers, has studied gamma rays caused by the Sagittarius Dwarf, a small neighbouring galaxy of our Milky Way. They showed that all the observed gamma radiation can be explained by millisecond pulsars, and can therefore not be interpreted as a smoking gun signature for the presence of dark matter. The results were published in Nature Astronomy this week.

The center of our galaxy is blowing a pair of colossal bubbles ...

An artist’s impression of a millisecond pulsar and its companion. The pulsar (seen in blue with two radiation beams) is accreting material from its bloated red companion star and increasing its rotation rate. Astronomers have measured the orbital parameters of four millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster 47 Tuc and modeled their possible formation and evolution paths. Credit: European Space Agency & Francesco Ferraro (Bologna Astronomical Observatory)

When a star with a mass of roughly 10 solar masses finishes its life, it explodes as a supernova, leaving behind a neutron star as remnant “ash.” Neutron stars have masses of one-to-several suns but they are tiny in diameter, only tens of kilometers...