NASA | MSFC | SAO | Chandra X-ray Observatory | 2022 Jun 15
The G292.0+1.8 supernova remnant contains a pulsar moving at over a million miles per hour. This image features data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (red, orange, yellow, and blue), which was used to make this discovery, as discussed in our latest press release. The X-rays were combined with an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey, a ground-based survey of the entire sky.
Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that can form when massive stars run out of fuel, collapse and explode. Sometimes these explosions produce a "kick," which is what sent this pulsar racing through the remains of the supernova explosion. An inset shows a close-up look at this pulsar in X-rays from Chandra.
To make this discovery, the researchers compared Chandra images of G292.0+1.8 taken in 2006 and 2016. A pair of supplemental images show the change in position of the pulsar over the 10-year span. The shift in the source's position is small because the pulsar is about 20,000 light-years from Earth, but it traveled about 120 billion miles over this period. The researchers were able to measure this by combining Chandra's high-resolution images with a careful technique of checking the coordinates of the pulsar and other X-ray sources by using precise positions from the Gaia satellite. ...
The Proper Motion of the Pulsar J1124-5916 in
the Galactic Supernova Remnant G292.0+1.8 ~ Xi Long et al
- Astrophysical Journal 932(2):117 (2022 Jun 20) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac704b
- arXiv > astro-ph > arXiv:2205.07951 > 16 May 2022