The Sounds of Pulsars
These sounds directly correspond to the radio-waves emitted by the
brightest pulsars in the sky as received by some of the largest radio
telescopes in the world. To listen to the pulses of a radio pulsar,
click on its arrow icon.
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PSR B0329+54
This pulsar is a typical, normal pulsar, rotating with a period of
0.714519 seconds, i.e. close to 1.40 rotations/sec. |
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PSR B0833-45, The Vela Pulsar
This pulsar lies near the centre of the Vela supernova remnant, which
is the debris of the explosion of a massive star about 10,000 years
ago. The pulsar is the collapsed core of this star, rotating with a
period of 89 milliseconds or about 11 times a second. |
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PSR B0531+21, The Crab Pulsar
This is the youngest known pulsar and lies at the centre of the Crab
Nebula, the supernova remnant of its birth explosion, which was
witnessed by Europeans and Chinese in the year 1054 A.D. as a day-time
light in the sky. The pulsar rotates about 30 times a second. |
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PSR J0437-4715
This is a recently discovered millisecond pulsar, an old pulsar which
has been spun up by the accretion of material from a binary companion
star as it expands in its red giant phase. The accretion process
results in orbital angular momentum of the companion star being
converted to rotational angular momentum of the neutron star, which is
now rotating about 174 times a second. |
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PSR B1937+21
This is the second fastest known pulsar, rotating with a period of
0.00155780644887275 seconds, or about 642 times a second. The surface
of this star is moving at about 1/7 of the velocity of light and
illustrates the enormous gravitational forces which prevent it flying
apart due to the immense centrifugal forces. The fastest-rotating
pulsar is PSR J1748-2446ad, which rotates about 10% faster at 716
times a second. |
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The Pulsars in 47 Tucanae
This beautiful globular cluster harbours 22 millisecond pulsars with
periods between 2 and 8 ms. Many of them have a binary companion. We
can estimate
that hundreds more of these objects are in the cluster, but they may
be too weak to be detected.
The first sound file is a sequence of 16
of the known millisecond pulsars followed by them all played together.
The second file is a sequence of the pulsar sounds as they fade
due to intensity variation caused by interstellar scintillation.
Click on the image if you would like to view an animated tour of the
cluster, with the pulsars occupying the 3D positions determined from
timing observations. The sounds are the true sounds of the pulsars,
but their images are rotating several hundred times slower than
reality.
(This video was produced by Michael Kramer and Andrew Lyne .
Note that it is about 40MB in size)
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