In the aftermath of a 8 – 20 solar mass star’s demise we find a weird little object known as a neutron star. Neutrons stars are incredibly dense, spin rapidly, and have very strong magnetic fields. Some of them we see as pulsars, flashing in brightness as they spin. Neutrons stars with the strongest magnetic fields are called magnetars, and are capable of colossal bursts of energy that can be detected over vast distances.
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Table of Contents
A Star Can Collapse to Form a Neutron Star 0:59
Neutron Star Characteristics 2:24
Pulsars 5:56
Magnetars 8:15
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PHOTOS/VIDEOS
Star Burst https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11447 [credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center]
X-ray Images of G292.0+1.8 http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/animations/snr.html/?page=8 [credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/S.Park et al.; Optical: Pal.Obs. DSS]
Neutron star cross section https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neutron_star_cross_section.jpg [credit: NASA]
Fermi Spots ‘Superflares’ in the Crab Nebula https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDhdwgK218E [credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center]
What is a pulsar? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjLk_72V9Bw [credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center]
Jocelyn Bell http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/2013/03/20/1960-discovery-of-pulsars/ [credit: National Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library]
Beacons of X-ray Light https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p2OGc6a_TQ [credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]
Chandra Time-Lapse Movie http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/animations.html [credit: NASA/CXC/ASU/J.Hester et al.]
NASA’s Fermi Satellite Finds Hints of Starquakes in Magnetar ‘Storm’ http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-fermi-satellite-finds-hints-of-starquakes-in-magnetar-storm [credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger]
NASA’s Swift Reveals New Phenomenon in a Neutron Star http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/new-phenom.html#.Vcp-6flVhBe [credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center]
Cosmic Explosion Second Only to the Sun in Brightness https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=20077 [credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab]