* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: SWIFT J1756.9-2508

Blobrana · L

MIT astronomers played a key role in discovering what NASA calls one of the most bizarre objects in space: a star "skeleton" of very low mass that is orbiting and being slowly consumed by a pulsar, or remains of a second massive star, that is itself spinning faster than a kitchen blender.
A NASA team led by Hans Krimm and Craig Markwardt at Goddard Space Flight Centre and an MIT team led by Deepto Chakrabarty, an associate professor of physics in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, described the overall system (known by its abbreviation SWIFT J1756.9) in an article accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Blobrana · L

Using NASAs Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellites, astronomers have discovered one of the most bizarre planet-mass objects ever found.
The objects minimum mass is only about 7 times the mass of Jupiter. But instead of orbiting a normal star, this low-mass body orbits a rapidly spinning pulsar. It orbits the pulsar every 54.7 minutes at an average distance of only about 230,000 miles (slightly less than the Earth-Moon distance).
Hans Krimm of NASA Goddard discovered the system on June 7, when Swifts Burst Alert Telescope picked up an outburst of X rays and gamma rays in the direction of the galactic centre. The source was named SWIFT J1756.9-2508 for its sky coordinates in the constellation Sagittarius.

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RA: 17:56:52 Dec: -25d07m30.1s

SWIFT J1756.9-2508.kmz
Google Sky file

-- Edited by Blobrana at 16:44, 2008-01-12