Dead star Vela Pulsar emits highest-energy gamma rays

An extraordinary detection of the highest energy gamma rays from a dead star called Vela Pulsar has been made byscientists using the H.E.S.S. observatory in Namibia, as per an international team who made the announcement on October 5 in the journal Nature Astronomy. The gamma rays emitted by the dead starVela Pulsar were found to possess an astonishing energy level of 20 tera-electronvolts, equivalent to around ten trillion times the energy of visible light.

What are Pulsars?

Pulsars are remnants of massive stars that underwent explosive supernova events. These explosions leave behind tiny, dense stars with diameters of approximately 20 kilometres.

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These dead stars, primarily composed of neutrons, are incredibly dense, with just a teaspoon of their material weighing more than five billion tonnes, roughly 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza, H.E.S.S. scientist Emma de Oña Wilhelmi, a co-author of the study, reportedly said providing insights into the Pulsar.

Pulsars as cosmic lighthouses

Pulsars emit beams of electromagnetic radiation that rotate like cosmic lighthouses. When these beams cross our solar system, we observe periodic flashes of radiation, known as pulses.

“On their outward journey, the electrons acquire energy and release it in the form of the observed radiation beams,” said Bronek Rudak from the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (CAMK PAN) in Poland, also a co-author.

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The Vela pulsar, situated in the Southern sky within the constellation Vela, is the brightest pulsar in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and the most prominent source of cosmic gamma rays in the giga-electronvolts (GeV) range.

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It rotates around eleven times per second and was previously believed to cease emitting radiation above a few GeV, possibly because electrons reached the magnetosphere's edge and escaped.

Deep observations with H.E.S.S. unveiled a previously unknown radiation component at even higher energies, reaching tens of tera-electronvolts (TeV).

“That is about 200 times more energetic than all radiation ever detected before from this object,” said co-author Christo Venter from the North-West University in South Africa.

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