The nebula is six light-years wide, and it is a growing cloud of debris formed by a supernova explosion. (A light year is six trillion miles).
The light of this supernova first reached Earth in July 1054 and is seen by astronomers in Japan and China.
When the star explodes, it forms a neutron star, which is the dense core of a star about the size of a city like Chicago. It has become a pulsating, or rapidly rotating neutron star, now located in the nebula.
This star rotates 30 times per second and is considered one of the brightest pulses that emit light in X-rays and radio wavelengths visible in our sky. When these rays of light sweep through the earth, scientists can catalog the pulses and determine if they are a pulse.
It releases clear millisecond-long pulses of radio waves, called giant radio pulses, which are accompanied by X-ray surges.
How the nebula discovery was made
A worldwide team of scientists made the discovery using data from NASA’s NICER telescope, or the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer, located on the International Space Station.
The NICER telescope was used to observe the pulsar of the scratch nebula between August 2017 and August 2019. It has also been observed using ground-based telescopes such as the 34-meter dish at the Kashima Space Technology Center in Japan and the 64-meter dish at the Japanese Aeronautical Agency Usuda Deep Space Center. Kashima’s telescope was irreparably damaged by a typhoon in 2019.
“Of more than 2,800 catalogs, the Crab Pulse is one of only a few that emit giant radio pulses, which occur sporadically and can be hundreds to thousands of times brighter than ordinary pulses,” said study author and team member Teruaki Enoto. . leader at the RIKEN pioneer research cluster in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, in a statement.
“After decades of observations, it is shown that only the Krap improves its giant radio pulses with emissions from other parts of the spectrum.”
The team was able to analyze the largest amount of X-ray and radio data collected simultaneously from a pulsar and increase the known energy range by thousands.
The team collectively captured 3.7 million pulsar rotations and 26,000 giant pulsar radio pulses.
Huge radio pulses occur within the millionth of a second and can be unpredictable – until they occur. Then they release regular pulses.
The accuracy of NICER makes it possible to record X-rays within 100 nanoseconds after detection.
Telescope can keep up
“NICER’s ability to observe bright X-ray sources is almost four times greater than the combined brightness of both the pulsar and its nebula,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, deputy principal investigator and science leader for NICER, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said. , in a statement.
“These observations were largely unaffected by congestion – where a detector counts two or more x-rays as a single event – and other problems that made earlier analyzes difficult.
An analysis of the X-rays that took place with the giant radio pulses revealed X-ray surges of about 4%, which is very similar to the 3% increase in visible light that is also related to the pulses .
Although it may sound like a small percentage difference, X-rays are millions of times more energetic than radio waves.
“We still do not understand how or where pulsars deliver their complex and comprehensive emissions, and it is gratifying that we have contributed another piece to the puzzle with more wavelengths of these fascinating objects,” says Enoto.
Unlock a space puzzle
If you understand more about these giant radio pulses, you can gain insight into mysterious fast radio bursts that travel millions and billions of light years to reach the earth.
Some scientists believe that the mechanics behind the origin of giant radio pulses of pulses may also be the same as the origin of fast radio bursts. These eruptions, known as FRBs, are also millisecond long radio signals, and some of them have even been traced back to their origin and are known to be repeated. But their origin is unknown.
It is suspected that these rapid radio bursts, which occur outside our galaxy, are also associated with pulses.
“However, the relationship between the two remains controversial, and these findings, coupled with the forthcoming discoveries regarding rapid radio eruptions, will help us understand the connection between these phenomena,” Enoto said.