NASA Obtains the First Precise Measurements of a Pulsar

Pulsars are among the cosmic objects that baffled the minds of astronomers for many years. But what cosmic object hasn’t done that, right? Black holes, quasars, galaxies, dark matter, and many other structures – they all made humanity to raise important questions about our nature and seek for answers.

But now pulsars are the ‘stars of the show’. Scientists gathered important insights on this kind of object by using the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), which is NASA’s x-ray telescope mounted on the International Space Station.

First precise measurements and first map of hot-spots

Scientists managed to obtain the first precise measurements of both the size and mass of a pulsar, along with the first-ever map of hot spots on the surface of such cosmic objects. The pulsar analyzed is the one called J0030+0451, and it’s located 1,100 light-years away from us, in the constellation Pisces.

Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA, stated:

From its perch on the space station, NICER is revolutionizing our understanding of pulsars,

Pulsars were discovered more than 50 years ago as beacons of stars that have collapsed into dense cores, behaving unlike anything we see on Earth. With NICER we can probe the nature of these dense remnants in ways that seemed impossible until now.

The outcome is shocking

Observations have been made by NICER between July 2017 and December 2018. A team led by the doctoral student in computational astrophysics, Thomas Riley, concluded that the pulsar is around 1.3 times the mass of our Sun and 15.8 miles across. Cole Miller, who is an astronomy professor at the University of Maryland, led the second team of researchers, and together they found J0030 to be 1.4 times the mass of our Sun, and 16.2 miles wide.

When the teams mapped the locations of J0030’s spots, they expected to find some there based on the old textbook image of pulsars, but they had a surprise. They found up to three hot “spots” in the southern hemisphere.

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