In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an outlandish household of outlandish objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory help enhance the conception that it is miles additionally a pulsar, that design it emits regular pulses of sunshine.
Magnetars are a form of neutron star, an extremely dense object mainly made up of tightly packed neutron, which forms from the collapsed core of an enormous star all over a supernova.
What objects magnetars apart from different neutron stars is that they additionally possess the most highly effective known magnetic fields in the universe. For context, the means of our planet’s magnetic field has a label of about one Gauss, whereas a fridge magnet measures about 100 Gauss. Magnetars, on the assorted hand, possess magnetic fields of a few million billion Gauss. If a magnetar turned into once situated a sixth of easy recommendations to the Moon (about 40,000 miles), it would wipe the guidelines from all of the credit rating playing cards on Earth.
On March 12, 2020, astronomers detected a new magnetar with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope. Right here is barely the 31st known magnetar, out of the roughly 3,000 known neutron stars.
After prepare-up observations, researchers certain that this object, dubbed J1818.0-1607, turned into once special for different causes. First, it can most likely seemingly well seemingly be the youngest known magnetar, with an age estimated to be about 500 years faded. Right here is basically based mostly on how immediate the rotation rate is slowing and the realization that it turned into once born spinning mighty faster. Secondly, it additionally spins faster than any beforehand learned magnetar, rotating once round every 1.4 seconds.
Chandra’s observations of J1818.0-1607 bought no longer as a lot as a month after the discovery with Swift gave astronomers the principle high-resolution search data from of this object in X-rays. The Chandra data printed a degree source where the magnetar turned into once situated, which is surrounded by diffuse X-ray emission, seemingly precipitated by X-rays reflecting off mud situated in its vicinity. (Some of this diffuse X-ray emission is also from winds blowing away from the neutron star.)
Harsha Blumer of West Virginia College and Samar Safi-Harb of the College of Manitoba in Canada no longer too long ago printed results from the Chandra observations of J1818.0-1607 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This composite image contains a large field of search data from in the infrared from two NASA missions, the Spitzer Dwelling Telescope and the Extensive-Discipline Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), taken sooner than the magnetar’s discovery. X-rays from Chandra video display the magnetar in purple. The magnetar is situated shut to the plane of the Milky Blueprint galaxy at a distance of about 21,000 gentle-years from Earth.
A bunch of astronomers possess additionally noticed J1818.0-1607 with radio telescopes, such because the NSF’s Karl Jansky Very Gigantic Array (VLA), and sure that it offers off radio waves. This implies that it additionally has properties resembling that of a peculiar “rotation-powered pulsar,” a form of neutron star that offers off beams of radiation which can seemingly well seemingly be detected as repeating pulses of emission because it rotates and slows down. Fully 5 magnetars along side this one possess been recorded to additionally act cherish pulsars, constituting no longer as a lot as 0.2% of the known neutron star population.
The Chandra observations might per chance seemingly well provide enhance for this fashioned conception. Safi-Harb and Blumer studied how effectively J1818.0-1607 is changing energy from its lowering rate of streak into X-rays. They concluded this efficiency is lower than that in general learned for magnetars, and seemingly inside the differ learned for different rotation-powered pulsars.
The explosion that created a magnetar of this age might per chance seemingly well seemingly be anticipated to possess left in the again of a detectable debris field. To judge this supernova remnant, Safi-Harb and Blumer seemed on the X-rays from Chandra, infrared data from Spitzer, and the radio data from the VLA. Essentially based entirely mostly on the Spitzer and VLA data they found imaginable proof for a remnant, but at a moderately tall distance away from the magnetar. In remark to quilt this distance the magnetar would must possess traveled at speeds some distance exceeding these of the fastest known neutron stars, even assuming it is miles design older than anticipated, which can seemingly well perchance enable more hasten time.
Extra data:
Harsha Blumer et al. Chandra Observations of the Newly Stumbled on Magnetar Swift J1818.0–1607, The Astrophysical Journal (2020). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/abc6a2
Citation:
Chandra observations model unheard of magnetar (2021, January 8)
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