Posted on 01/27/2023 9:01:30 AM PST by Red Badger
An orbiting star begins to eclipse its partner, a rapidly rotating, superdense stellar remnant called a pulsar. Image courtesy of Aurore Simonnet/Sonoma State University/NASA
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Jan. 26 (UPI) -- NASA made a first-of-its-kind discovery with its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, spotting the first gamma-ray eclipses from a special type of star system.
The agency shared the news with Nature Astronomy on Thursday after scientists researched a decade of observations from the telescope that can detect the most astonishing celestial events from gamma bursts to black holes.
Gamma-ray eclipses were observed from a special binary star system that is orbited by what is called a spider system. Binary systems are two stars that have a gravitational pull toward and rotate around each other.
A spider system includes the remnants of a star that exploded in a supernova, called a pulsar. This cosmic phenomenon has piqued the curiosity of astronomers due to their rhythmic flicker.
"One of the most important goals for studying spiders is to try to measure the masses of the pulsars," said Colin Clark, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany, who led the research team.
"Pulsars are basically balls of the densest matter we can measure. The maximum mass they can reach constrains the physics within these extreme environments, which can't be replicated on Earth."
Since Fermi launched in 2008, it has discovered more than 300 gamma-ray pulsars. One of the pulsars it detected was the first to ever be detected outside of the Milky Way galaxy. It has detected cosmic events such as the merging of neutron stars, and given researchers the ability to map out the the history of such events.
"Before Fermi, we only knew of a handful of pulsars that emitted gamma rays," said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
"After over a decade of observations, the mission has identified over 300 and collected a long, nearly uninterrupted dataset that allows the community to do trailblazing science."
Something Blocks Gamma Rays!.....................
Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds?
So we are orbiting a “non-binary star.” Good thing we are 93 million miles away.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the space exploration mission. But how exactly does this affect the price of eggs?
Oh, great! So the Sun identifies as non-binary. I was wondering how physics would be corrupted!
Lots of things block gamma rays. Earth’s atmosphere does a very good job of blocking gamma, which is why they have to put the gamma ray detector up in a satellite.
Something as big as a star will block gamma rays quite nicely.
It affects the price of spiders.
Which in turn reduces seating demand.
And reduces the price of curds and whey.
Thanks Red Badger, I'll get to those others in a few.
Man, it is getting dangerous out in space /sarc
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