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20-08-2010
Home PCs find new pulsar in Arecibo data; WSRT follows up.
| Submitter: | Joeri van Leeuwen |
| Description: | Last week, we announced the first astronomical discovery by a public volunteer distributed computing project (Science, 12 Aug|PDF). Using donated time from the computers of 250,000 volunteers, the Einstein@Home team found a new radio pulsar in data from the PALFA survey, which is run by an international team of collaborators including Jason Hessels and Joeri van Leeuwen from ASTRON. After the initial detection from Arecibo, gridded observations with Westerbork were crucial for a precise determination of the pulsar position. The new pulsar - called PSR J2007+2722 - is a neutron star that rotates 41 times per second. Pulsars that spin quickly and have low magnetic fields, like PSR J2007+2722, are though to have been spun or "recycled" up by a binary companion. The newly found pulsar, however, is single. Figure: the detection plot on the left, showing the highly significant detection peaks around the 41Hz period, overlaid on a screenshot of the Einstein@Home screensaver client with the new pulsar marked in white. |
| Copyright: | E@H, JVL |
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