| 29th of October 2018 |
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| LOFAR discovery of a 23.5-second radio pulsar |
| by Tan et al. |
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An international team of astronomers have discovered the
slowest-spinning radio pulsar yet known - the neutron star spins
around only once every 23.5 seconds. This is over 15,000 times slower
than the fastest-spinning pulsar known. The discovery was made using
observations from the LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey, aimed at
discovering more pulsars. Moreover, the pulsar spins so remarkably
slowly that it can also be seen blinking 'on' and 'off' in images from
LOFAR's imaging survey. It is surprising that a pulsar can spin so
slowly and still create radio pulses. The pulsar is approximately 14
million years old but still has a strong magnetic field. This
challenges and informs our theories about how pulsars shine. The
findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal, and are available
in this preprint.
The image above shows an artist's conception of the newly-discovered 23.5-second pulsar. Radio pulses originating from the pulsar (shown in the inset image), which is located in the constellation Cassiopeia some 5,200 light-years away from Earth, are detected by the LOFAR telescope. (Image credit: Danielle Futselaar and ASTRON). |