The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope only settled into its orbit a few months ago, but it's already producing results that are delighting astronomers. Yesterday, NASA announced that Fermi had found a strange pulsar (a fast-spinning neutron star) by detecting only the gamma rays it emits. This is a first, NASA explains.
Although astronomers have catalogued nearly 1800 pulsars, this is the first pulsar that seems to emit only gamma-ray radiation. Most other pulsars have been found using radio telescopes, although some also beam energy in visible light and X-rays [New Scientist].
Neutron stars are the small and incredibly dense bodies formed when massive stars explode into supernovas; perhaps the oddest of neutron stars are pulsars, which
send out jets of radiation from their magnetic poles that sweep across Earth's line of sight as the star spins on its axis. The newfound pulsar, which sits 4,600 light-years away in the constellation ...
