Night of the Living Dead... Stars

[Jamie]

Like the shambling monsters in a zombie movie, the corpses of dead stars might have a little fight left in them after all. ESA's Integral spacecraft has been analyzing some anomalous X-ray pulsars, which are thought to be neutron stars with powerful X-ray beams that regularly sweep past the Earth. Integral confirmed that these pulsars have magnetic fields billions of times stronger than anything created here on Earth.

Full article http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/stellar_integral.html?1632006

[OXO]

Nice find Jamie,"Hard Tails" i have not heard of those before interesting

Amazing what we can pick up on our days..

James

[radioactive]

its like a super massive cosmic dynamo

[FLO]

Fascinating read Jamie,

What are X and Gamma rays and why are astronomers so fond of them :scratch:

[Astroman]

What are X and Gamma rays and why are astronomers so fond of them :scratch:

X and Gamma rays are very high energy light waves. They are "popular", (though I'm not sure that's the right term), because they reveal quite a lot about the source, as well as the intervening materials. Being very high energy and high frequency, they also stay bright for very long distances and so can be observed from very far away. Their downside is the do not penetrate the atmosphere and so can't be observed from the ground. Satellites have to be used to detect them, and the data beamed down to the astronomers. But the bottom line is, there's a lot to see at these wavelengths, and this information is extremely useful.

[FLO]

Thanks AM - thats a whole lot clearer

[Astroman]

Hope so. It seems a bit addled to me.....

[FLO]

Bright, high energy, high frequency, long distance, reveals more about the source and whatever it passes thru.

See, I get it 8)

[Astroman]

Thanks.