It's the anniversary of Jocelyn Bell Burnell's 1968 paper (later she'd be robbed of the #Nobel physics prize by her supervisor).
That iconic picture of her always reminds me of this modern meme, which incidentally would've been an appropriate reaction to the Nobel committee's behaviour:
SNRs are classified by their emission structure. Shell-type remnants show limb-brightened radio emission. Crab-like remnants are pulsar wind nebulae. Composite remnants combine both a shell and a central pulsar wind nebula.
New in the #VirtualObservatory: “Pulsar Vela X-1 Pulse-to-Pulse Approach” by Du Y.-J. et al.
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/706/A175
#GammaRayAstronomy #Accretion #Pulsars
New in the #VirtualObservatory: “Long-term 2.25 and 8.60GHz obs. of XTE J1810-197” by Huang Z.-P. et al.
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/956/93
#Pulsars #RadioSources
New in the #VirtualObservatory: “Spectral index distrib. of RACS ATNF pulsars” by Anumarlapudi A. et al.
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/956/28
#Interferometry #Surveys #RadioSources #Pulsars
📄 Rapidly Rotating Neutron Stars in General Relativity: Realistic Equat…
Quicklook:
Cook, Gregory B. et al. (1994) · The Astrophysical Journal
Reads: 6 · Citations: 629
DOI: 10.1086/173934
🔗 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994ApJ...424..823C/abstract
#Astronomy #Astrophysics #BlackHoles #EquationsOfState #Pulsars
Supplement to the Open Journal of Astrophysics – “Pulsar Science with the SKAO”
It’s been a busy day at the Open Journal of Astrophysics as we’ve published 12 related papers in the form of our first ever Supplement; officially it is Vol. 8 Supplement Issue 1. The idea of a Supplement is to publish a set of related papers together. I imagine it might be of interest for publishing conference proceedings, etc.
The topic of this Supplement is Pulsar Science with the Square Kilometre Array Observatory and it includes updates to the Science Case for the SKAO, the previous version of which is 10 years old. All the papers are indendependently peer-reviewed, which took some organizing and a lot of time because many potential referees are themselves members of the SKA Pulsar Science Working Group! Anyway, the final versions of all the papers hit the arXiv this morning so I published them all today.
Rather than include all 12 papers in tomorrow’s Saturday update I decided just to show the overlay for the overview of the special issue, which is here:
The following paragraph describes the content of the supplement and includes links to the other 11 papers in the issue.
The large instantaneous sensitivity, a wide frequency coverage and flexible observation modes with large number of beams in the sky are the main features of the upcoming SKA observatory’s two telescopes, the SKA-Low and the SKA-Mid, which are located on two different continents. Owing to these capabilities, the SKAO telescopes are going to be a game-changer for radio astronomy in general and pulsar astronomy in particular. The eleven articles in this special issue on pulsar science with the SKA Observatory describe its impact on different areas of pulsar science. Phase 1 of the rollout of the SKAO telescope is likely to double the known pulsar population in new surveys described in the first three papers (Keane et al. 2025; Abbate et al. 2025; Bagchi et al. 2025). These new discoveries will improve our understanding of the dynamics, evolution and gas content of globular clusters and the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy apart from increasing the samples for each of different kinds of radio emitting neutron stars (Levin et al. 2025). The larger population sample will enhance our understanding of the magneto-ionic interstellar medium (Tiburzi et al. 2025; Xu et al. 2025), the pulsar magnetosphere (Oswald et al. 2025) and pulsar wind nebulae (Gelfand et al. 2025). Moreover, the discovery of exotic neutron star systems will test gravity theory ever more stringently (Krishnan et al. 2025) and will probe fundamental physics at sub-atomic level (Basu et al. 2025). Finally, this enhanced sample is likely to make the sky portrait sharper in nano-Hertz gravitational waves impacting on our understanding of the Universe in a fundamental way (Shannon et al. 2025). In summary, the papers in this special issue describe the way the upcoming SKA Observatory’s telescopes address fundamental physics through the study of pulsars and gravitational waves.
#DiamondOpenAccessPublishing #OpenAccessPublishing #OpenJournalOfAstrophysics #PulsarScience #pulsars #SKAO #SquareKilometreArray #SquareKilometreArrayObservatory #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics
NASA’s Webb Observes Exoplanet Whose Composition Defies Explanation
Scientists using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have observed a rare type of exoplanet, or planet outside our…
#NewsBeep #News #Topstories #Astrophysics #ExoplanetAtmosphere #Exoplanets #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #Headlines #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope(JWST) #NeutronStars #PlanetaryEnvironments&Atmospheres #Pulsars #Science&Research #TopStories
https://www.newsbeep.com/314353/
NASA’s Webb Observes Exoplanet Whose Composition Defies Explanation https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-observes-exoplanet-whose-composition-defies-explanation/ #NASA #Astrophysics #ExoplanetAtmosphere #Exoplanets #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #JamesWebbSpaceTelescopeJWST #NeutronStars #PlanetaryEnvironmentsAtmospheres #Pulsars #ScienceResearch
NASA’s Webb Observes Exoplanet Whose Composition Defies Explanation https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-observes-exoplanet-whose-composition-defies-explanation/ #NASA #ExoplanetAtmosphere #Exoplanets #JamesWebbSpaceTelescopeJWST #NeutronStars #PlanetaryEnvironmentsAtmospheres #Pulsars
New in the #VirtualObservatory: “SpiderCat, Compact Binary Millisecond Pulsars” by Koljonen K.I.I. et al.
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/994/8
#GammaRayAstronomy #Pulsars #XRayBinaryStars
@CarveHerName I remember when LGM-1 (for Little Green Men) was discovered. I always thought it was grossly unfair when Hewish got the Nobel prize in physics and she did not get a mention. #pulsars #Jocelyn_Bell
🆕 New selected research highlight ✨
Einstein@Home probes the Galactic center gamma-ray glow 🌌
The volunteer computing project @einsteinathome searched for members of a proposed, hidden millisecond pulsar population near the center of the Milky Way and discovered four new pulsars.
ℹ️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1318665/einstein-home-probes-the-galactic-center-gamma-ray-glow
📄 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae0b5c [Open Access publication in The Astrophysical Journal]
#CitizenScience #Astronomy #Pulsars #Astrophysics #Physics #Discovery #OpenAccess
Einstein@Home probes the Galactic center gamma-ray glow
The results from an @einsteinathome search for a proposed, hidden millisecond pulsar population near the center of the Milky Way have been published in The Astrophysical Journal today.
The results include the discovery of four previously unknown gamma-ray pulsars.
📄 Publication: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ae0b5c
💬 News item on our homepage: https://einsteinathome.org/de/content/einsteinhome-probes-galactic-center-gamma-ray-glow
Many thanks to all of our volunteers whose computing time contributions made this work possible!
#CitizenScience #Astronomy #Pulsars #Astrophysics #Physics #Discovery
Well, here's some very exciting news!
I've been wanting to share this for a few months, but had to await the pre-print to drop.
A NEW GLITCH EVENT ON A MILLISECOND PULSAR HAS BEEN OBSERVED!
These events are extremely rare - only two others since MSPs were discovered.
Glitches are more commonly observed in the younger, canonical pulsar population as MSPs are much older and should have sorted out these types of disruptive events over their evolution.
That's what makes them so stable!
OR ... maybe they're not as stable as we once thought ...
This new paper predicts that we should see a glitch per MSP once every 400 years or so.
Glitches, profile changes .... as our instruments become more sensitive and datasets expand in time, we're starting to see that MSPs might not be as stable as we once thought ...
That's really important!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/new-glitch-millisecond-pulsar
📸 NASA SVS
#SpaceAustralia #RadioAstronomy #Astrodon #Astrophysics #Science #Pulsars
I am so very excited to share this story. Def. a career highlight!
Having the opportunity to sit down and have a one-on-one candid chat with the woman who discovered pulsars and changed the course of astrophysics, leading to me being extremely passionate about this topic and eventually moving into a career of pulsar astronomy. Yeah, this was big.
I hope you enjoy this interview, where Prof. Bell Burnell offers some personal insight into the history of the big discovery as well as the legacy of one of astronomy’s most iconic and influential figures.
What an honour it is to tell this story!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/interview-dame-professor-jocelyn-bell-burnell
📸 University of Cambridge
#SpaceAustralia #RadioAstronomy #Pulsars #JocelynBellBurnell #Astrophysics #Science #Astrodon
In 2018 she was awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for her discovery of #pulsars & leadership in science. She donated money to the IOP for PhD scholarships for underrepresented people including women, ethnic minorities & refugee students in physics!
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/178998272
🧵5/5
Today was a good day. I got to meet one of my heroes.
Got to spend one-on-one time with the woman who discovered pulsars, Dame Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and interview her for a #SpaceAustralia article 🥺🥺🥺
And she signed a copy of my first-ever PhD paper which I will now have framed and remember forever! 😭😭😭
She is the most humble, nicest person. Just kindness, personified. And such an extremely interesting life - as you can imagine.
I'll publish my article and interview with her in about 12 hours from now (around 8:30am Sydney time) - so keep an eye out for it.
Thanks to Manisha Caleb who took this photo of us.
#Pulsars #RadioAstronomy #JocelynBellBurnell #Astrodon #Science #Astrophysics
👀👀👀
Some really interesting ideas here (pre-print) from Michael Kramer and Simon Johnston (SJ works with us!).
Unlike the conventional concept of radio emissions in millisecond pulsars coming from polar caps, could they also be coming from regions where gamma-rays are emitted?!
If the idea is correct, then somehow the theorists are going to have to figure out how to get coherent emissions from outside the polar cap (which is gonna be fun). But if so we should see more MSPs!
Radio emission from beyond the light cylinder in millisecond #pulsars: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05778 -> thread https://bsky.app/profile/cosmicrami.com/post/3m2ogyrg2qs22
