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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Eerie Beauty of "The Black Widow" Pulsar

BlackWidowPulsar

The pulsar, a.k.a. the "Black Widow," is moving through the galaxy at a speed of almost a million kilometers per hour. A bow shock wave due to this motion is visible to optical telescopes, shown in this image as the greenish crescent shape. The pressure behind the bow shock creates a second shock wave that sweeps the cloud of high-energy particles back from the pulsar to form the cocoon.
This composite X-ray (red/white) and optical (green/blue) image reveals an elongated cloud, or cocoon, of high-energy particles flowing behind the rapidly rotating pulsar, B1957+20 (white point-like source).

Read More: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/10/image-of-the-day-the-violent-beauty-of-the-black-widow-pulsar.html

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