- A rapidly spinning neutron star, known as a pulsar, has been discovered in the Glimpse-C01 star cluster.
- This pulsar, located about 10,700 light-years from Earth, was detected by the VLA on February 27, 2021.
- The discovery was made by US Naval Research Laboratory intern Amaris McCarver and a team of astronomers.
New Pulsar Discovery in Glimpse-C01 Star Cluster
A rapidly spinning neutron star, also known as a pulsar, has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) intern Amaris McCarver. This remarkable find is located within the dense star cluster Glimpse-C01, which lies in the galactic plane of the Milky Way, approximately 10,700 light-years from Earth.
The newly identified pulsar, designated GLIMPSE-C01A, is the first of its kind found in the Glimpse-C01 star cluster. It spins hundreds of times per second, making it a millisecond pulsar. The pulsar was initially detected by the Very Large Array (VLA) on February 27, 2021. However, it remained hidden within a vast amount of data until McCarver and her colleagues unearthed it during the summer of 2023.
McCarver and her team discovered this pulsar while analyzing images from the VLA’s Low-band Ionosphere and Transient Experiment (VLITE). Their goal was to hunt for new pulsars in 97 star clusters. The success of this project was particularly thrilling for McCarver, who is one of 16 interns in the Radio, Infrared, Optical Sensors Branch at NRL DC.
“It was exciting so early in my career to see a speculative project work out so successfully,” McCarver said in a statement, reflecting on the significance of their groundbreaking discovery.
