PSR J0426+4933
// Pulsar
About 24 km across — a city that outweighs the Sun.
// Data-inspired illustration— not a photograph
Rare6%
- ◆ Type
- Pulsar
- ◆ Rotation period
- 922.5 msmeasured
- ◆ Magnetic field
- 6.1 × 10¹² gaussmeasured
- ◆ Characteristic age
- 371,482 yearsmeasured
// Time capsule
This light is about 6,000 years old — it left in the Stone Age, as the first farmers were settling the first villages.
See it. Aladin sky atlas·SIMBAD record
◆ Discovery points9,811
Bottom 4% for a neutron star11
- +1,711RareCosmic LighthouseA pulsar sweeps a beam of radio waves across space as it spins; we only see it because the beam happens to cross Earth.
- +1,673RareRadio Pulsarsweeps a beam of radio waves past Earth as it spins
- +1,667RareSugar-Cube MountainA neutron star squeezes more than the Sun's mass into a city-sized ball. One sugar-cube of its core would weigh as much as a mountain.
- +1,667RareMarshmallow BombIts surface gravity is around 100 billion times Earth's — a marshmallow dropped onto it would hit with the energy of an atomic bomb.
- +1,667RareLittle Green MenThe first pulsar was catalogued 'LGM-1' — for 'Little Green Men' — because its beeps were so regular that an artificial signal wasn't ruled out.
- +502UncommonIn the Milky Way's Bandwithin 8° of the galactic plane — buried in the star clouds
- +263CommonAncient Lightlight left this object over 2,000 years ago
- +226CommonNorthern Skysits north of the celestial equator
- +163CommonInside the Milky Waycloser than 100,000 light-years — still within our own galaxy
- +162CommonAncient Constellationin a constellation catalogued by Ptolemy nearly 2,000 years ago
- +110CommonCatalogue Designationknown only by a survey or catalogue label, never given a name