pulsar

Einstein Right Again! Rapidly Spinning Pulsar Follows General Relativity

April 25, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter A unique and exotic laboratory about 6,800 light-years from Earth is helping Earth-based astronomers test Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity in ways not possible until now. And the observations exactly match predictions from general relativity, say scientists in a paper [...]

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Pulsar Sets New Speed Record

June 30, 2012

A pulsar may have been spotted racing through space at over 6 million miles per hour (9.65 million km/h), setting a new speed record for these curious cosmic objects. If observations are what they appear to be, astronomers will have to recalculate the incredible forces created by supernova explosions. Remove this ad

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Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast: February 19-25, 2012

February 18, 2012

Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! It’s going to be an awesome week as we watch the planets – Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury – dance along the ecliptic plane. You don’t even need a telescope for this show! But that’s not all. We’ll take a look at a wealth of bright star clusters, challenging studies and [...]

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X-rays Unwrap a Poky Little Pulsar

December 21, 2011

For the first time astronomers have located a pulsar – the super-dense, spinning remains of a star – nestled within the remnants of a supernova in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The image above, a composite of x-ray  and optical light data acquired by NASA’s Chandra Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton, shows the pulsar shining brightly on [...]

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The Crab Gets Cooked With Gamma Rays

October 7, 2011

It’s one of the most famous sights in the night sky… and 957 years ago it was bright enough to be seen during the day. This supernova event was one of the most spectacular of its kind and it still delights, amazes and even surprises astronomers to this day. Think there’s nothing new to know [...]

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