By Iain Todd
Published: Thursday, 28 November 2024 at 12:29 PM
Image and video shows Guitar Nebula with flaming filament 12 trillion miles long shooting into space
This brand new image shows an object known as the ‘Guitar Nebula’, with a ‘flaming’ filament 12 trillion miles long trailing from its head.
The image and video were captured using the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope.
The guitar shape is made of bubbles blown by particles ejected by a pulsar – a rapidly-spinning neutron star – at the head.
And the filament stretching outwards – making it look like some sort of flaming guitar from the 1960s – is made up of energetic matter and antimatter particles.
As the pulsar, known as PSR B2224+65, races through space it’s pumping out the filament trail, captured here in x-ray light by Chandra.
More amazing Chandra observations
What’s going on?
There’s quite a lot happening in this image and video of the Guitar Nebula!
Astronomers say the fast rotation and strong magnetic fields of pulsars cause particle acceleration and high-energy radiation, which produces matter and antimatter particles.
In other words, energy is being converted into mass.
The x-rays seen by Chandra are generated by particles spiralling along the pulsar’s magnetic field lines.
That’s because the pulsar and its surrounding nebula are actually flying through space, colliding with regions of dense cosmic gas.
This causes the most energetic particles to escape the Guitar Nebula and shoot outwards, producing the filament that’s visible in x-ray light.
Video of the Guitar Nebula
A video of the Guitar Nebula shows changes in the filament seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2021.
You can see the video by scrolling to the top of this article.
The optical view of the ‘guitar’ is the static, so the nebula does not appear to change in the video.
Astronomers say the data shows how the processes driving the formation of bubbles in the nebula – the guitar shape – also control changes in how many particles escape to the right of the pulsar.
This causes the brightening and fading of the filament, making it look like a rippling flame.
Rock on.
Read the full paper at ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022ApJ…939…70D/abstract