Get ready for exciting news from the stars, as astronomers report the detection of a new pulsar wind nebula and the pulsar that powers it. The discovery is now making waves thanks to a paper published Dec. 12 on the pre-print server arXiv. This groundbreaking research was made possible by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), as well as MeerKAT and Parkes radio telescopes.
But what exactly are pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe)? They’re nebulae powered by the pulsar wind. This wind is made up of charged particles, and when it collides with a pulsar’s surroundings, particularly the slowly expanding supernova ejecta, a PWN is formed.
What makes this discovery even more intriguing? The particles in PWNe lose their energy to radiation and become less energetic with distance from the central pulsar. The amazing potential here is that multiwavelength studies of these objects, including X-ray observations, can offer crucial insights into particle flow and PWNe nature in general.
Attention now turns to the team headed by Western Sydney University’s Sanja Lazarević, who found the remarkable new pulsar wind nebula in radio-continuum surveys obtained from ASKAP and MeerKAT. Named “Potoroo,” after a small marsupial native to Australia, curiosity reached even greater heights with the detection of a pulsar candidate, which was assigned the designation PSR J1638–4713 using the Parkes Ultra-Wideband Low (UWL) frequency receiver system. This candidate was subsequently confirmed to power the Potoroo.
The team’s observations revealed that Potoroo displays distinctive cometary morphology in both the radio and X-ray bands. This indicates that the pulsar leads the PWN and moves through the ambient medium at supersonic speeds.
According to the study, Potoroo lies at a distance of at least 32,500 light years and has a radio size of about 68.5 light years, while the X-ray size appears to be 10 times smaller. As such, Potoroo now boasts the longest PWN radio trails known to date.
The results so far show that Potoroo has an unusually steep overall radio spectrum—at a level of -1.27! » … rnrn
Excited to learn more? Take a look at the full article Read More
