Pulsating serpent: first millisecond pulsar discovered at galactic center

Astronomers at the Australian National Telescope National Facility (ATNF) report the discovery of a new millisecond pulsar within the radio filament ‘snake’ at the center of our galaxy. This is the first millisecond pulsar discovered at the center of our galaxy. This discovery is detailed in his April 13th article published on the preprint server arXiv. Pulsars are highly magnetized rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. The fastest rotating pulsars with a rotation period of less than 30 milliseconds are called millisecond pulsars (MSP). Astronomers believe that binary systems form by first turning the heavier component into a neutron star, then adding material from the secondary star to rotate the neutron star. Now, a team of astronomers led by ATNF’s Marcus E. Lower has discovered a new MSP using the Mulyan Ultra Wideband Low (UWL) receiver system at the 64-meter-tall Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia. They studied a recently discovered radio point source in G359.1–0.2 (designated G359.13142–0.2000) called the Serpent, which is one of the most prominent radio filaments at the center of the Milky Way. did. “We conducted an opportunity observation (project code PX130) of G359.13142â0.2000 on 25 March 2024 using the Muryan Ultra-Wideband Low (UWL) receiver system,” the researchers said. written in the paper. As a result, they discovered a pulsar with a rotation period of 8.39 milliseconds. The newly discovered MSP has a dispersion of approximately 673.7pc/cm3 and was named PSR J1744–2946. According to the study, PSR J1744–2946 is located about 27,400 light-years away and has a radio luminosity of 30 mJy kpc2. The magnetic flux density of PSR J1744-2946 is consistent with that of G359.13142-0.2000 at 4 GHz, and astronomers say a newly discovered pulsar is likely driving this source. That’s what I think. This observation revealed that PSR J1744-2946 is a binary star system with an orbital period of approximately 4.8 hours. The companion object’s mass is estimated to be at least 0.05 solar masses. Researchers note that PSR J1744-2946 may be related to this snake. If confirmed, this would suggest that pulsars may be involved in illuminating radio filaments at the galactic center. In summary, the authors emphasize that the discovery of millisecond pulsars so close to the galactic center offers hope that many MSPs are yet to be discovered there. However, frequent investigations are required to confirm this. “Future studies of the entire galactic center region above 3 GHz are therefore warranted. The discovery of a large population of MSPs supports the idea that the Fermi-GeV excess in this region is due to such a population.” “The scientists concluded.

source: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2404.09098