NASA has published images taken by space telescopes Chandra and Hubble. They show a nebula, which due to its characteristic shape astronomers gave the name Guitar.
The Guitar Nebula is located 6,000 light-years away from Earth. It is 2 light-years long and at its “tip” is the pulsar PSR B2224+65, a rapidly rotating neutron star left behind after the collapse of a massive star.
But how could space have produced something so bizarre? The combination of two extremes — rapid rotation and extremely powerful magnetic fields of the pulsar leads to particle acceleration and the formation of high-energy radiation that creates matter and antimatter particles in the form of pairs of electrons and positrons. In this situation, the usual process of mass-to-energy conversion described by Albert Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 is reversed. Here energy is converted into mass to create particles.
Particles spiraling along the magnetic field lines around the pulsar produce X-rays that Chandra can detect. As the pulsar and the surrounding cloud of high-energy particles swept through space, they collided with denser regions of gas, forming bubbles in them. This allowed the most energetic particles to leave the Guitar Nebula and fly to the right of the pulsar, creating a filament of X-ray emission that resembles a flaming torch flying out of its tip.
The observations, made with the Chandra and Hubble telescopes, allowed astronomers to understand how changes in the number of particles emitted by the pulsar affected the formation of bubbles in the hydrogen nebula which formed the outline of the Guitar Nebula. They also provided valuable insights into how electrons and positrons enter and travel in the interstellar medium.
Earlier we reported on how astronomers photographed the Dark Wolf in the sky.
Provided by NASA
