The Study of Magnetars and Pulsars
The universe has stars including neutron stars, black or white dwarfs, blue or red giants and super giants and many more, which all vary in magnetic fields strength. One of the more interesting types of stars is the neutron stars. They are stars that have the core of a large star that has collapsed, that were formed as a result of an supernovae explosion. Two main types of neutron stars are magnetars, a type of neutron star with a high and extremely strong magnetic field, and pulsars, which is another type of neutron star that gives out radiation that fall through Earth’s sight. Magnetars and pulsars are both of the most magnetic stars in the universe. Both of these stars are results of the supernovae explosion
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Magnetars are neutron stars that were formed from the supernovae explosion of an unknown event that caused them to have powerful magnetic fields. It is unsure as to why magnetars have such high levels of magnetic fields but they do consist of the strongest magnetic energy in the universe. (Cain, 2016). When magnetars were first discovered in the universe, they were not known as magnetars but instead known as Soft Gamma Repeaters, SGRs, or Anomalous X-ray Pulsars, AXPs (Kaspi & Beloborodov, 2017). Since neutron stars consist of mainly magnetars and pulsars, about 10% of all neutron stars are born as magnetars and last about years, and as of the year 2006, there were about twelve active magnetars in the universe (Beloborodov & Thompson, 2006). This shows that since that even with several supernovae explosions, there are still a limited amount of magnetars known to astronomers. Since only 10% of all neutron stars are born as magnetars, and the fact that there are only about twelve magnetars in the world, the growth and birth rate of magnetars are just a fraction of the pulsar birthrate (Thompson, Lyutikov & Kulkarni, 2002). When looking at the galaxy that humans currently live in, the Milky Way …show more content…
Pulsars are neutron stars that display radiation, in the form of radio waves, to Earth. Pulsars have been discovered approximately fifty years ago, and they are mainly observed and studied based on their radio wavelengths. Additionally, pulsars are known to be the most fundamental time-variable source and shows time scales that range from measurements as small as nanoseconds to measurements as big as years (Stappers, 2011). Since pulsars are one of the main pointers of time-variable sources, they are important to astronomers as it can help predict and analyze stars and events that may occur in the future. Although pulsars mainly give out radio wavelengths, they are only radiated at a tiny fraction which is approximately of the luminosity (Kerr, 2012). Furthermore, pulsars are extremely fast spinning neutron stars and some types of pulsar stars, including Crab and Vela, are strong sources that can have photon energies that surpass the energy of . The discovery of pulsars occurred in a recent time frame and the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer, NICER, was the first NASA mission that was set out to study pulsars and discover what they were. The first pulsar that was discovered was the PSR B1919+21 (Hille, 2017). The pulsar that was discovered, along with most of the other pulsars discovered, also possess an enormous amount of magnetic energy, similar to Magnetars. Their magnetic field is about