(ORDO NEWS) — Using various space telescopes, astronomers have made X-ray observations of a radio pulsar known as PSR J1420-6048.
Pulsars are highly magnetized spinning neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation.
They are usually detected as short bursts of radio emission, but some of them are also observed with optical, X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes.
The Pulsar Wind Nebula (PWN) is a nebula powered by the wind of a pulsar.
The wind of a pulsar is made up of charged particles. When it encounters the environment of a pulsar, in particular a slowly expanding supernova, it develops a PWN.
PSR J1420-6048 lies about 18,200 light-years away. Its age is estimated at 13,000 years. The spin luminosity is about 10 undecillion erg/s.
PSR J1420-6048 shows radio pulsations with a period of 68 milliseconds, confirming their connection with the PWN detected in the radio and X-ray bands.
PWN, designated K3, has an X-ray spectrum with a photon index of about 2.0 that softens with increasing distance from the pulsar.
A team of astronomers led by Jaegen Pak from Chungbuk National University in South Korea decided to study these objects using the Chandra, XMM-Newton and NuSTAR space observatories.
Based on broadband X-ray data, the researchers were able to characterize the emission properties of PSR J1420-6048 and K3.
They found that the pulsar’s X-ray pulse profile shows a sharp spike and a wide bulge, separated by about 0.5 in phase.
The astronomers also detected a hint of spectral softening with increasing distance from PSR J1420-6048, in line with previous measurements of spectral softening in K3.
The team was able to identify substructures of K3: two nodes, a torus structure, and large-scale tails extending in a northwesterly direction. In addition, an area of bright scattered radiation was found in the south.
According to the authors of the paper, the results show that in K3 particles are accelerated to very high energies (about 1 PeV), the nebula’s magnetic field is low, and particles are transported mainly by advection into the PWN.
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