What is a Pulsar?

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Pulsars are type of neutron stars. And they emits radio beams across the Universe. They are made out of neutrons and they are highly magnetized. The size of a Pulsar could be about 1km of radius but the weight is many times larger than our Sun. They are actually remnants of star explosion such as super nova explosions.

As I said before they are highly magnetized objects in the space and at the magnetic poles of the neutron stars the radiation emission happens throughout the universe. These neutron stars are spinning in high speeds. Some are spinning in hundreds of times a second around its spinning axis. When they spin around its axis, the radian beams spread across the universe like a light beam in a light house. And if we are in the line of sight, we can observe the radian beam. But they are not visible to the naked eye. To observe these pulsars, we can use large radio telescopes or radio antenna arrays.

  
 Radio Telescopes (Credit: pixabay.com)
 
They are very fainter radio signals and some of them are fainter than thermal noise. There are different types of Pulsars. They are as follows,
  • Millisecond Pulsars (MSP)
  • Magnetars
  • Young Pulsars
  • Rotating Radio Transients
  • Binary Pulsars

Binary pulsars can be orbiting two neutron stars or neutron star orbiting a black hole or else neutron star orbiting another star. There are several advantages of finding pulsars in the universe mostly binary pulsars. They are test beds for General Relativity, Cosmology, Gravitational waves, and many more. 

 
Illustration of a Pulsar (Credit: B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF) 


Following are some YouTube videos you can find to learn more. These contents available in both English and Sinhala versions.
 



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