Stellar Graveyard tagged posts

They are mysterious, exciting and inescapable—black holes are some of the most exotic objects in the universe. With gravitational-wave detectors, it is possible to detect the chirp sound that two black holes produce when they merge, approximately 70 such chirps have been found so far.

A team of researchers at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) now predicts that in this “ocean of voices” chirps preferentially occur in two universal frequency ranges. The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The discovery of gravitational waves...

An international team led by a University of Sydney scientist has discovered an unusual radio signal emitting neutron star that rotates extremely slowly, completing one rotation every 76 seconds.

The star is unique because it resides in the “neutron star graveyard,” where no pulsations are expected. The discovery was made by the MeerTRAP team using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa and is published in Nature Astronomy.

The star was initially detected from a single pulse. It was then possible to confirm multiple pulses using simultaneous consecutive eight-second-long images of the sky, to confirm its position.

Neutron stars are extremely dense r...