Artist’s impression of the Vela pulsar, in the centre, and its magnetosphere, whose edge is marked by the bright circle. The blue tracks travelling outwards represent the paths of accelerated particles. These produce gamma radiation along the arms of a rotating spiral by colliding with infrared photons emitted in the magnetosphere (in red).
Artist's impression of the Vela pulsar, in the centre, and its magnetosphere, whose edge is marked by the bright circle. The blue tracks travelling outwards represent the paths of accelerated particles. These produce gamma radiation along the arms of a rotating spiral by colliding with infrared photons emitted in the magnetosphere ( in red ). Science Communication Lab for DESY Pulsars, small, very dense dead stars, emit electromagnetic radiation in the form of beams that sweep through space at regular intervals, rather like cosmic lighthouses. Now, recent observations of one of the nearest pulsars to Earth, the Vela pulsar, have caused a major stir in the scientific community: radiation around 200 times more energetic than any previously detected from this source has been detected at the H.E.S.S. 1 observatory by scientists from the CNRS 2
and CEA, working as part of an international team. This remarkable discovery is hard to reconcile with the commonly accepted theory that particles produced near the surface of pulsars are accelerated along their magnetic field lines out to the edges of their magnetosphere.
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