(CN) — In a galaxy far, far away — but not very long ago — a baby neutron star was born. Astronomers discovered one of the youngest known neutron stars in the skies, capturing images of its magnetic field.
Neutron stars are highly dense remains of a much larger star that exploded as a supernova. In the study published Wednesday, researchers describe the object, known as VT 1137-0337. It lives in a dwarf galaxy 395 million lightyears away from our own planet.
It was only recently that the bright radio emissions from the pulsar’s magnetic field surfaced, finding their way in front of debris released from the explosion.
“Based on its characteristics, this is a very young pulsar — possibly as young as only 14 years, but no older than 60 to 80 years,” said Gregg Hallinan, a researcher at Caltech.
Captured by the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the images of the newly identified object are likely a “pulsar wind nebula,” the result of a neutron star’s magnetic field spinning and accelerating — reaching near light speed — surrounding charged particles.
If the name “Crab Nebula” sounds familiar, you’ve heard of a pulsar wind nebula. That pulsar is ancient by comparison; it came from a supernova whose explosion was blaring bright in the year 1054 and is still visible today.
“The object we have found appears to be approximately 10,000 times more energetic than the Crab, with a stronger magnetic field,” said Dillon Dong, a graduate of Caltech who worked on the project. “It likely is an emerging ‘super Crab.’”
Dong and Hallinan’s team identified the young star with data from a project that began in 2017, seeking to scan and capture the entire visible sky, which is about 80% of its full expanse. The researchers pored over scans of the dwarf galaxy where the object was found.
“This one stood out because its galaxy is experiencing a burst of star formation, and also because of the characteristics of its radio emission,” Dong said.
As with most scientific discoveries, researchers agreed they can’t say with 100% certainty that the object identified is in fact a pulsar wind nebula. It could instead be a supermagnetic object called a “magnetar,” which may create pulses known as fast radio bursts.
“In that case, this would be the first magnetar caught in the act of appearing, and that, too, is extremely exciting,” Dong said.
The research was reported at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California.
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