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P564 - Studying the magnetar XTE J1810-197

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Title P564 - Studying the magnetar XTE J1810-197
 
Subject Astronomical and Space Sciences not elsewhere classified
 
Description Neutron stars are extreme objects, the size of a city but containing the
mass of the Sun. Pulsars are neutron stars with very strong magnetic
fields that rotate rapidly and emit focused beams of radio waves that we
may detect on Earth once with every turn of the star, in light-house-like
fashion. While the typical pulsar has a magnetic field strength at its
surface approximately a million million times stronger than Earth's,
a special and rare (only a dozen are known) class of neutron stars has a
field up to another factor of 1000 stronger - these are the "magnetars",
the most magnetic objects known in the Universe. Magnetars shine
in ways that are different from those of ordinary pulsars. For many
years, despite careful searches, no magnetar was seen to shine at radio
wavelengths. The object of our program, XTE J1810-197, is different -
alone among the magnetars it emits remarkable radio pulses with every
turn of the star, every 5.5 seconds, that we first detected using the
Parkes 64-metre dish in March 2006. We are now trying to learn more
about the characteristics of this radiation.
 
Publisher CSIRO
 
Date 2022-07-28
 
Identifier csiro:P564
 
Language eng