Pulsar
PSR J0040-7337
Young pulsar · in the remnant DEM S5
A neutron star spinning once every 0.060 seconds; the beams from its magnetic poles sweep across Earth on every turn. Not in the Milky Way but in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Period, spin-down, distance and orbit come from the ATNF Pulsar Catalogue; the beam geometry is illustrative.
| Type | Pulsar |
|---|---|
| Constellation | Tucana |
| Host galaxy | Small Magellanic Cloud |
| Period | 59.889 ms (17 Hz) |
| Period derivative | 3.4×10⁻¹⁴ s/s |
| Characteristic age | 28 thousand years |
| Magnetic field | 1.4×10¹² G |
| Spin-down luminosity | 6.3×10³⁶ erg/s |
| Dispersion measure | 101.8 pc/cm³ |
| Distance | 58,720 pc (191.5 thousand ly) |
| Location | in the remnant DEM S5 |
| Discovery | 2024 · meerkat_trapum |
| Source | ATNF Pulsar Catalogue |
| Right ascension (J2000) | 0h 40m 46.7s |
| Declination (J2000) | −73° 37′ 07″ |
In the sky
Visible from the whole Southern Hemisphere and north to latitude 16° N. South of latitude 16° S it never sets. It stands highest at midnight in September, the best time to observe it.
Through a telescope from Earth
Light's journey
The light you see tonight set out 192 thousand years ago. At that time Homo sapiens was spreading out of Africa; there was no farming yet. At the speed of Voyager 1, the fastest craft leaving the Solar System (16.9 km per second), the trip would take 3.4 billion years.