Found: Andromeda's first spinning neutron star
5 Apr 2016 22:56:46 UTC
Topic 198556
(moderation:
In a galaxy far far away an x-ray pulsar
I notice the data came from XMM-Newton, i wonder if amongst their X ray spectrum data there is something E@H can analyse.
Found: Andromeda's first spinning neutron star
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Wow great find and great question! Is the archival data that the group who made the discovery publicly available?
Short answer : if you can
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Short answer : if you can Fourier Transform it, then yes we can.
Shorter answer : you can FT any time sequence of data. :-)
Seriously, the analysis methodology here at E@H - especially the 'hierarchical' techniques - have been so fruitful for blind searching of large parameter spaces for periodic or near-periodic waveforms. X-ray photons are still photons .....
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
My wonderment sort of fell
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My wonderment sort of fell into the
I know there is only a handful visible in optical light so was that true for Xray pulsars.
Are x-ray pulsars so rare you need to be looking at a galaxy sized sample and then you might see one if it was a) close and b) bright enough c) lucky?
Is the x-ray output from pulsars so much weaker than gamma / radio so there is no point in looking for them?
Has no one really looked hard for them?
I could not find a pulsar "main sequence" type map which put these weird spinning things into categories.
RE: My wonderment sort of
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I'll blob all this into one answer which is that the emission mechanism in the neutron star's surrounds is very poorly understood. That is, we understand why it is pulsatile from our viewpoint but not why it emits at all. All modes of emission are sought for in order to then get a better handle on what might be happening. When we get a continuous GW signal from one of these and if we can correlate with some EM output then we will know much more. One key question seems to be : what mode dominates the energy loss from such systems ( most are slowing down their spin )? Is is the EM or GW ? Fascinating.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_X-ray_pulsars