Feb 8 1989
From The Space Library
Astronomers from the University of California at Berkeley announced the possible discovery of a newborn pulsar at the heart of stellar debris from Supernova 1987a. A pulsar is an extremely dense sphere of neutrons less than a few miles in diameter but with a magnetic field trillions of times more powerful than the Earth's. The object at the heart of Supernova 1987a appeared to be spinning at a rate of 2,000 rotations per second. The observations were made by an international team of scientists working at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American observatory in Chile. The frequency of the light emitted by the object was found to vary in a regular pattern, suggesting that it was part of a binary system, with a smaller object rotating around a larger twin. The discovery was announced in a circular sent to members of the International Astronomical Union. (UPI, Feb 8/89; NY Times, Feb 9/89; B Sun, Feb 10/89)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
