Posts Tagged ‘neutron star’
Fireworks in D
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The letter D is outlined in this celestial fireworks display. The colorful filaments seen in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of N49 are all that’s left of a supernova explosion that took place thousands of years ago in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This supernova remnant is called N 49, or DEM L 190. Inside these sheets of glowing star debris lies a powerful, spinning neutron star called a pulsar. Pulsars give off regular pulses of energy like the ticking of a very precise clock. After the supernova blows off the outer layers of the star, it collapses under its own gravity. The star collapses so much that the protons and electrons spinning around the atoms of the star combine to form neutrons. A neutron star is very dense. Imagine our entire Sun packed into an area of just 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter! Gravity is very strong on a neutron star. On Earth, a spoonful of neutron star material would weigh billions of tons. The magnetic field of N 49 is super strong, trillions of times stronger than Earth’s, putting it in special class of bizarre celestial objects called magnetars.
Fluttering in the Breeze
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Glowing strands of gas and dust, like the hair of a goddess, stream from N44C, a group of hot, young stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Monkey Face
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Do you see a monkey face looking up? Or sparks and smoke left over from a fireworks display? The colorful filaments seen in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of N49 are all that’s left of a supernova explosion that took place thousands of years ago in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This supernova remnant is called N 49, or DEM L 190. Inside these sheets of glowing star debris lies a powerful, spinning neutron star called a pulsar. Pulsars give off regular pulses of energy like the ticking of a very precise clock. After the supernova blows off the outer layers of the star, it collapses under its own gravity. The star collapses so much that the protons and electrons spinning around the atoms of the star combine to form neutrons. A neutron star is very dense. Imagine our entire Sun packed into an area of just 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter! Gravity is very strong on a neutron star. On Earth, a spoonful of neutron star material would weigh billions of tons. The magnetic field of N 49 is super strong, trillions of times stronger than Earth’s, putting it in special class of bizarre celestial objects called magnetars.
The Crab
Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)
In the year 1054, Japanese, Chinese and Native American astronomers recorded a violent event. They saw a star that hadn’t been there before. It turned out to be a supernova that formed the Crab Nebula and it’s one of the earliest recorded astronomical events by humans.
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