Neutron Star - The Guest Star, The Origin Of Neutron Stars, Properties Of Neutron Stars, Observing Neutron Stars
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A neutron star is the dead remnant of a massive star. A massive star ends its life as a supernova, a catastrophic explosion that flings the star's outer layers into space, leaving only the core behind. If the mass of the core is between 1.4 and 2.5 times the mass of the Sun, it will become a neutron star, a solid mass of neutrons a hundred trillion times more dense than water. Neutron stars are tiny, about 6.2 mi (10 km) across, and they rotate very rapidly and have tremendously strong magnetic fields. Because they are massive and small, they also have intense gravitational fields. They are most easily observed in the radio and x ray portions of the spectrum, so they were not discovered until the late 1960s, when radio and x ray telescopes capable of detecting them began to become available.
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When a star that is between about three to eight times as massive as the Sun dies, it goes in spectacular fashion. The star's core temperature is in excess of half a billion degrees kelvin, and must remain this hot for thermonuclear fusion reactions involving its last reserves of fuel to take place. Then the fuel runs out. No longer able to produce fusion reactions to sustain it, the star c…
With twice the mass of the Sun crammed into a space no larger than a small city, a neutron star is fantastically dense. A sugar-cube-sized piece of neutron star would weigh billions of tons. Neutron stars rotate rapidly. This is because the original stellar core was rotating, and as it collapsed its rotation rate increased, in the same way figure skaters spin increasingly rapidly by drawing their …
Many neutron stars look like the drawing in Figure 1. The neutron star's rotation axis is inclined with respect to its magnetic axis. (The same situation prevails on Earth.) The neutron star's rapid rotation and intense magnetic field cause radiation to be emitted in narrow beams from the magnetic poles. If the Earth happens to be in line with one of these beams, we will see a flash …
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