If space is a garden, then the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) just posted a picture of one of its most amazing flowers. On Tuesday NASA Chandra X-Ray posted a picture of a clear pulsar on her Instagram hand. NASA wrote that the pulsar is about 20 kilometers in diameter and that the SXP 1062 pulsar is the bright light source on the right side of the image, which rotates remarkably slowly once every 18 minutes. . In the caption, the space agency also reported that the fastest pulsar is the PSR J1748-2446ad which orbits 716 times per second.
The post has been well received by over 21k Instagram users as they express their opinions. One user wrote, “It looks like a rose in the middle? Amazing. Another user commented, “Vibing like jelly fishes.” For some, NASA’s latest post was “Interesting information. ”
NASA’s Chandra website explains that the composite image is made up of X-rays from the blue-colored Chandra and XMM-Newton and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile on the color red and green.
Scientists have discovered that the SXP 1062 is a remnant of a supernova due to the diffused X-rays and the optical shell surrounding the pulsar. NASA says the optical data also show interesting shapes of gas and dust in a star-forming region to the left of the image. After scientists compared Chandra’s image to optical images, they discovered that the pulsar has a hot, large companion.
What makes the SXP 1062 interesting to astronauts is the Chandra and XMM-Newton data that shows it to turn remarkably slow. This moderately slow speed of SXP 1062 makes it one of the slowest rotating X-ray shots in the SMC.
SXP 1062 is estimated to be between 10,000 and 40,000 years old, in the image shared on Instagram. However, that does not make him old but very young, from a celestial point of view as astronomers believe that it may have been created in the same explosion that produced the remains of a supernova.