The world of neutron stars

artiteacher The discovery of little green men

artiteacher Pulsars and the cosmic lighthouse

Seven hundred times a second, J-Seventeen-Forty-Eight flashes in the deep.

artiteacher Clocks of cosmic precision

artiteacher Some pulsars spin hundreds of times per second, rivaling the accuracy of Earth's best atomic clocks.

artiteacher Irish astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsar in 1967, initially wondering if it was an alien signal.

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* Pocket Pulsar - simple, playful, describes a

BETA

artiteacher Spin the dense neutron star to discover how rapid rotation creates a cosmic lighthouse.

Fun Fact

Fast spins: The fastest known pulsar, PSR J1748-2446ad, spins on its axis 716 times every single second.

Glossary

pulsar (noun)
A rapidly spinning neutron star that emits regular pulses of radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation. Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first of these highly magnetized, rotating stellar corpses in 1967.

Gossip

Would you name a newly discovered star after yourself?

Quiz

What type of celestial object is a pulsar?

artiteacher The famous Crab Nebula pulsar

Quiz

What process spins up a 'millisecond pulsar' to extreme speeds?

artiteacher The cosmic lighthouse effect

Quiz

What did the discoverers of the first pulsar jokingly name their signal?

Quiz

How do pulsars compare to human-made timekeeping devices?

Quiz

Who discovered the first pulsar in 1967?

Quiz

How fast does the fastest known pulsar spin every second?

Quiz

What kind of electromagnetic radiation do we most commonly detect from pulsars?

Quiz

In what year did Chinese and Arab astronomers record the supernova that created the Crab Nebula?