Featured Image: A Pulsar in a Nebula in a Supernova Remnant
When a massive star collapses, the subsequent supernova can leave
behind the star’s condensed core in the form of a neutron star. Some
neutron stars are also pulsars, which rotate at incredible speeds, emit
beamed radio emission, and expel winds of charged particles. A pulsar’s
relativistic charged-particle winds billow around the pulsar as it
travels through space — often at a few hundreds of kilometers per second
or faster, having received a “kick” when its progenitor star exploded.
When these winds interact with the surrounding supernova ejecta or the
interstellar medium, the interaction creates a detectable pulsar wind nebula.
The image above combines data from the Australian Square Kilometre
Array Pathfinder (orange) and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (cyan)
to show a pulsar wind nebula, indicated with a white rectangle, within a
larger supernova remnant. Sanja Lazarević (Western Sydney University)
and collaborators discovered this pulsar wind nebula, which they’ve
named “Thunder” in a nod to the supernova remnant’s moniker, “Nimbus.”
The cometary shape of the pulsar wind nebula suggests that the pulsar is
moving quickly, traveling outward from the center of the explosion that
occurred some 30,000–45,000 years ago. To learn more about the
discovery and characterizati,bron of this pulsar wind nebula, check out the
article linked below.
Citation
“EMU Discovery of Thunder: A Bow-Shock PWN Powered by PSR J1631–4722
Escaping the Nimbus SNR (G336.7+0.5),” S. Lazarević et al 2026 ApJ 1007 159. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae7f11
