Astronomers Detected The Slowest-Spinning Radio Pulsar Ever
A team of scientists from around the world has discovered a new radio pulsar as part of the LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS). The recently observed space object, dubbed as PSR J0250+5854, is the slowest-spinning radio pulsar ever found by astronomers so far, according to a study report issued on September 4 on arXiv.
These alien source of radiations commonly deemed as pulsars are observed in the form of short bursts of radio emissions. In general, radio pulsars are highly-magnetised, rapidly rotating neutron stars.
Just earlier, a team of scientists led by Chia Min Tan of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Manchester, UK, has discovered a new radio pulsar with a very slow spinning period. Actually, this is the slowest-spinning radio pulsar ever detected.
Although the report on this discovery has been recently issued, the finding took place in July 2017 with the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope system situated mainly in the Netherlands.
The slowest-spinning radio pulsar was detected by the scientists shedding more light on pulsars
“We subsequently detected pulsations from the pulsar in the interferometric images of the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey, allowing for sub-arcsecond localization,” stated the astronomers in the study’s report.
Situated at 5,200 light years away from the Earth, the slowest-spinning radio pulsar ever detected is a rotation-powered pulsar, meaning that the drop of rotational energy of the star gives the strength of the radio emissions.
With a spin period of about 23.5 seconds, the PSR J0250+5854 is the slowest-spinning radio pulsar ever detected by scientists.
The astronomers also revealed that the PSR J0250+5854, the slowest-spinning radio pulsar ever found, of 13.7 million years old, and has a surface magnetic field strength of 26 trillion G and a spin-down luminosity of 82 octillion erg/s.
According to these data, the slowest-spinning radio pulsar ever found by astronomers has a dipolar magnetic field configuration.
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