3 ms·

This type of emission is not directed, right? Which means it's not firing "at" anything, it's just emitting in all directions.

pkdpic 1y ago
That's a good point, I didn't catch any explanation for that choice of wording. Wonder if it was intentional.
ianburrell 1y ago
Pulsars shoot beams out of their magnetic poles so they are directed but in a beam. Even the narrowest would be lots of stars. They are also spinning so they sweep a larger area.
- somat 1y ago
  My natural first question is. If it is coming out of the pole, why is it sweeping? My guess, nothing is perfect, the rotation pole does not align exactly with the magnetic pole. A second followup question, do stars tend to be coaxially aligned with their galaxy? it it possible to tell which way a star or pulsar is rotating?
  - dumah 1y ago
    This is called the pulsar’s magnetic inclination and it’s often quite far from 0, all the way to nearly orthogonal. Yes but this is a dynamic process that produces more correlated stars as the galaxy ages. Astronomers routinely measure such parameters using models to provide confidence bounds for their estimates. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13857 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13857
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
This type of emission may be directed (or at least, emitted by something rotating, so directed at different locations around a circle as it rotates). That would leave it firing at Earth some of the time, and firing other places at other times. Or, it could be something that flares up every 44 minutes, and is emitted in all directions at once. We really don't know.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  If Earth is in the "sweep" of that rotation, the rise and falloff of the (continuous) signal will follow strict gaussian slopes outside the main beam, due to long-range diffraction. Pulses could follow such a slope, too, but might not, and that would provide differentiation.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Yeah. Unfortunately, the fine article gave no such details that I could see...

pkdpic 1y ago

That's a good point, I didn't catch any explanation for that choice of wording. Wonder if it was intentional.

ianburrell 1y ago

Pulsars shoot beams out of their magnetic poles so they are directed but in a beam. Even the narrowest would be lots of stars. They are also spinning so they sweep a larger area.

somat 1y ago
My natural first question is. If it is coming out of the pole, why is it sweeping? My guess, nothing is perfect, the rotation pole does not align exactly with the magnetic pole. A second followup question, do stars tend to be coaxially aligned with their galaxy? it it possible to tell which way a star or pulsar is rotating?
- dumah 1y ago
  This is called the pulsar’s magnetic inclination and it’s often quite far from 0, all the way to nearly orthogonal. Yes but this is a dynamic process that produces more correlated stars as the galaxy ages. Astronomers routinely measure such parameters using models to provide confidence bounds for their estimates. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13857 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13857

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

This type of emission may be directed (or at least, emitted by something rotating, so directed at different locations around a circle as it rotates). That would leave it firing at Earth some of the time, and firing other places at other times. Or, it could be something that flares up every 44 minutes, and is emitted in all directions at once. We really don't know.

IAmBroom 1y ago
If Earth is in the "sweep" of that rotation, the rise and falloff of the (continuous) signal will follow strict gaussian slopes outside the main beam, due to long-range diffraction. Pulses could follow such a slope, too, but might not, and that would provide differentiation.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Yeah. Unfortunately, the fine article gave no such details that I could see...