Tech

'Wind Nebula' Discovered, Magnetar Rotational Energy Power Extended Glow

Michael Finn
First Posted: Jun 23, 2016 09:23 AM EDT

Wind nebula was seen around magnetar. Astronomers have revealed that the occurrence presented through high-energy vast clouds came near the super-magnetic neutron star for the first time in history.

Neutron stars are from the core of massive stars that do not have fuel anymore. It collapsed on its own through time and exploded in the form of a supernova. Each of the explosion's amount is equivalent to the mass of the Manhattan Island in New York.  Of the 2,600 known neutron stars, only 29 are considered magnetars, Physics reported.

The wind nebula is surrounding a magnetar named Swift J1834.9-0846, a NASA's Swift satellite discovery in August 2011, during an X-ray outburst. Astronomers suspected that it is associated with W41 supernova remnant that is located 13,000 light-years away from the Scutum constellation.

George Younes of the George Washington University said, "Right now, we don't know how J1834.9 developed and continues to maintain a wind nebula, which until now was a structure only seen around young pulsars."

"If the process here is similar, then about 10 percent of the magnetar's rotational energy loss is powering the nebula's glow, which would be the highest efficiency ever measured in such a system," he added.

In March 2014, new XMM-Newton observations with XMM-Newton archival data confirmed the extended glowing as the very first wind nebula identified surrounding a magnetar. The paper will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The world's most popular wind nebula that is pulsar powered was not even a thousand year old. It lied at the center of the remnants of Crab Nebula supernova in the Taurus' constellation. Young pulsars, such as this one, rotate swiftly in more than a dozen per second.

The wind nebula discovery has opened a unique window into magnetars' properties, outburst history, and environment. Magnetars are the universe's strongest magnets.

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