Einstein@Home discovers first millisecond pulsar visible only in gamma rays

Einstein@Home has found two previously unknown rapidly rotating neutron stars in data from the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope. While all other such millisecond pulsars have also been observed with radio telescopes, one of the two discoveries is the first millisecond pulsar detectable solely through its pulsed gamma-ray emission. The findings raise hopes of detecting other new millisecond pulsars, e.g., from a predicted large population of such objects towards the center of our Galaxy.

Read more in this joint press release by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. The publication appeared in Science Advances.

We would like to express our gratitude to the tens of thousands of Einstein@Home volunteers who have donated their CPU time to the project. Without them the survey could not have been performed and these discoveries could not have been made. The two discoveries reported now and the volunteers whose computers made them are:

  • PSR J1035−6720: “WSyS”; Kurt Kovacs, of Seattle Washington, USA; and the ATLAS Cluster, AEI, Hannover, Germany.
  • PSR J1744−7619: Darrell Hoberer, of Gainesville, TX, USA; the ATLAS Cluster, AEI, Hannover, Germany; Igor Yakushin of Chicago, IL, USA and the LIGO Laboratory, USA; and Keith Pickstone of Oldham, UK.

 

 

Benjamin on behalf of the Einstein@Home team

Comments

sharky_|\_
sharky_|\_
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Congrats!! Would be

Congrats!!

Would be interesting why one of these new pulsars is not visible with radio telescopes? Is this a special type?

AgentB
AgentB
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It's great news, when the E@H

It's great news, when the E@H seems quiet and it seems nothing is happening.... something exciting usually happens!

I noticed, the survey searched 5.5 years of improved “Pass 8” Fermi-LAT data, that's a lot of data!

Albert Argilaga, Ph.D.
Albert Argilaga...
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Great discovery,

Great discovery, congratulations from Belgium!

Tim Brophy
Tim Brophy
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Fantastic. Congratulations

Fantastic. Congratulations from Ireland.

Liviu Micu
Liviu Micu
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Great news! Congratulations

Great news! Congratulations to the team and to all Einstein@Home volunteers!

lifetj
lifetj
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Congratulation to the

Congratulation to the volunteers 

  • PSR J1035−6720: “WSyS”; Kurt Kovacs, of Seattle Washington, USA; and the ATLAS Cluster, AEI, Hannover, Germany.
  • PSR J1744−7619: Darrell Hoberer, of Gainesville, TX, USA; the ATLAS Cluster, AEI, Hannover, Germany; Igor Yakushin of Chicago, IL, USA and the LIGO Laboratory, USA; and Keith Pickstone of Oldham, UK.

 

farcrowe
farcrowe
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Congrats on the discovery

Congrats on the discovery from the US.

Benjamin Knispel
Benjamin Knispel
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sharky____ schrieb:Would be

sharky____ wrote:
Would be interesting why one of these new pulsars is not visible with radio telescopes? Is this a special type?

Good question. The answer is: we do not know. It might be that this pulsar is intrinsically radio silent, or just very, very faint. It could also be that its radio beams simply do not intersect the line of sight towards Earth, although it is expected that they should.

Cheers, Benjamin

 

 

Einstein@Home Project

sssfffffff
sssfffffff
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Congratulations ! We will

Congratulations !
We will continue to be happy to participate in this great job!