Astronomers have made a remarkable discovery, uncovering a new millisecond pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 6. This finding could shed light on the formation and evolution of these enigmatic celestial objects, pushing the boundaries of our understanding of the universe.
Solving the puzzle of Terzan 6
Astronomers are interested in Terzan 6 for a long time, but so far everything about it has been kept a mystery. The cluster is core-collapsed, metal-rich, and located at a distance of some 21,800 light-years from us – making it a difficult target to observe.
While the star cluster resides so far away, a very high encounter rate of stars in Terran 6 might hold it home to many pulsars, which are fast-spinning neutron stars. But despite searches no pulsars have, until now, turned up in this mysterious cluster.
That is, until a team led by Shi-Jie Gao of the Nanjing University in China made history with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The targeted all of Terzan 6 at C-band (4-8 GHz) and discovered a new millisecond pulsar, named PSR J1751–3116A.
The Exceptional Attributes of PSR J1751-3116A
And PSR J1751-3116A is not your average pulsar. Herein is one ofm only 100 millisecond pulsars (MSP): the fastest-spinning neutron stars yet discovered, spinning with a period of just 5.33 milliseconds.
The dispersion measure of the pulsar is one such quantity — in fact, a comparison of the value observed by the researchers with an independently calculated value strongly indicates that PSR J1751-3116A really is associated with the globular cluster Terzan 6. That implies the pulsar is a permanent feature of this intriguing cosmic construction.
According to the investigation, this pulsar’s flux density (a measure of how much energy it gives off) is 3.0 microJansky (μJy) at 6.0 GHz. From this, the researchers inferred a flux density of about 23 μJy at 1.44 GHz for the pulsar on average.
In particular, the researchers suspect that PSR J1751–3116A is an isolated millisecond pulsar, which would be consistent with Terzan 6 being a core-collapsed globular cluster. Not only does this imply that the pulsar was born in a cluster and that the vehicle formation happened dynamically in the globular situation, instead of it being born as part of a binary pair, which is more common for MSPs.
Conclusion
The observation of PSR J1751-3116A in the globular cluster Terzan 6 provides wonderful insight into these puzzling objects. The discovery not only reveals more about the origin and progression of millisecond pulsars but also indicates that Terzan 6 could contain a horde of these fast-spinning neutron stars, yet to be discovered.
With more advanced radio telescopes like the GBT and the MeerKAT, astronomers hope to find additional pulsars in Terzan 6.A spectroscopically confirmed member of Terzan 6 — a dense star cluster harboring many exotic objects.Hosted by contributors to the paper. It is a reminder of the incredible things that modern astronomy can achieve and how our human nature to explore just cannot be contained.
