Diamonds in the sky, 08.29.11

Apparently stars can turn into diamonds—entire planets of diamond. One such planet has just recently been discovered.

*Not an actual photograph, sorry, just in case the orbital track didn't give it away :)
This is just an artist's concept of the system.

According to Matthew Bailes of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, in 2009 a millisecond pulsar was detected in the constellations Serpens, but its elusive orbiting neighbor had yet to be spotted until recently.

Let us back up for a moment first. We have talked about pulsars a lot in the past, but what is a millisecond pulsar? Like a regular pulsar, it rotates very quickly. Millisecond pulsars leave normal pulsars in the dust, though. This particular millisecond pulsar, designated J1719-1438, completely rotates over 10,000 times in a minute. It is only 12 miles in diameter, but it is still 1.4 times more massive than our own sun.

The entire system is so compact, that the distance for the pulsar at which the diamond planet orbits is still actually within the measure of our own sun’s diameter! The astronomers studying the system believe that the diamond planet used to be a white dwarf star, and that it went through as much fusion as it could until all that was left at its center was diamond. 

So how big is this galactic diamond? Oh, only 37,300 miles in diameter. Yeah, that is five times the size of Earth, people—a solid diamond five times the size of Earth! We can only imagine what other literal treasures the cosmos holds in store.

Credit: NASA. Image credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions.

Pin the tail on the pulsar, 07.18.11

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has seen something very interesting in recent months. In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, several astronomers note how they have witnessed a tail of sorts that appears to be spreading out from a pulsar. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, lovingly dubbed PSR J0357+3205.

The blue in this composite image is the Chandra x-ray data, and the yellow is a digitized sky survey. The pulsar is actually at the upper right-hand edge of the “tail,” which is part of the reason why astronomers are left scratching their heads over the situation. If the tail were really originating from the pulsar, the brightest portion should most likely be nearest the star, yet in this case the brightest portion is at the opposite end. This is even more shocking when you do a little math and realize that the tail is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.2 light years long. This would be a record-setting tail for a rotation-powered pulsar.

There are more reasons than one why this tail should not be originating from the star. We have to keep in mind, too, that astronomers are not 100% certain that this really is PSR J0357’s tail. More observations will need to be made to know for certain if this really is the pulsar’s tail and why it is providing such odd data readings.

Image and story credit: NASA.