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Pulsars seen through a new lens

Radio waves produced by cosmic lighthouses called pulsars are distorted by surrounding material. Observations show that this material can act as a lens, focusing the waves and boosting the brightness of the pulsar.
By
  1. Jason Hessels

    1. Jason Hessels is at ASTRON (the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy) and the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, 1098XH Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Much of what we know about the Universe comes from using telescopes to collect and study the electromagnetic waves produced by astronomical objects. These waves can be distorted and absorbed as they travel to Earth, providing valuable information about the otherwise invisible material that lies between stars and between galaxies. Rotating stellar remnants called pulsars have long been known to be excellent probes of interstellar matter1. A pulsar generates a beam of radio waves that flashes across the sky as the object rotates, just like the light from a lighthouse. In a paper in Nature, Main et al.2 report that ionized gas close to a pulsar can greatly amplify the object’s observed brightness, and allow astronomers to zoom in on the source of the emission. The discovery could also help to explain enigmatic astrophysical signals known as fast radio bursts.

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Nature 557, 494-495 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05185-y

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