The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was able to detect a rapidly moving pulsar that looks as if it had punched a hole through a stellar disk located around its companion star. A pulsar is a neutron star that is left behind after a supernova explosion of a larger star.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory also noted that the pulsar fired a segment of the disk in an outward direction with an estimated speed of about 4 million miles per hour. The cosmic clump appears to be accelerating, based on the observatory's monitoring efforts.
The experts observed the B1259 for three times through the Chandra observatory from December 2011 to February 2014. The said double star system is found 7,500 light years away from Earth. According to observations, the average speed of the clump moving away from the B1259 is about 7 percent of the speed of light, but between the second and third observations, the speed has been increased to 15 percent.
The analysis, detailed in The Astrophysical Journal, shows that the lengthened X-ray characteristic observed in previous monitoring is continuously shifting away from the stars, exhibiting a possibility of acceleration.
The scope of the X-ray seems to have a hard feature that does not manifest signs of softening compared to the values identified in the past. The astronomers interpreted the feature as a clump of plasma released from the binary as initiated by the interaction of the pulsar with the decretion disk of the O-star located around the periastron passage.
The researchers also suggest that unshocked relativistic pulsar wind (PW) is the main driving and accelerating force of the clump's movement. The X-rays being emitted can be regarded as a synchrotron radiation of the PW jolted by its forceful contact with the clump.
The double star system PSR B1259-63/LS 2883, collectively known as the B1259, serves as the home of a massive star that is comparable to the size of the sun and a pulsar. The pulsar rotates about 20 times per second and spins in an orbit that is notably elliptical around its companion star.
With this, the pulsar emits regular pulses and, with the significant magnetic field and rapid rotation it exhibits, a forceful wind of high-energy particles was observed to move away from the pulsar at a speed that is similar to that of light.
"These two objects are in an unusual cosmic arrangement and have given us a chance to witness something special," said George Pavlov, lead author of the study from Penn State University. "As the pulsar moved through the disk, it appears that it punched a clump of material out and flung it away into space."
The Chandra Observatory will continue to perform observations of the B1259 and its moving clump. The next round of monitoring is said to take place during the latter part of 2015 and in 2016.
