Astronomers have discovered a unique "black widow", but there is an extra third in the binary system

Astronomers have discovered a new system of a pulsar consuming a companion star in the Milky Way. Uniqueness

system, which was called ZTF J1406+1222, is veryshort orbital period. The star and pulsar orbit each other in 62 minutes, the fastest black widow orbital period currently known. The second feature of the system is that it has a third star, which orbits the two inner ones in about 10 thousand years.

Researchers used a new approach todiscovery of a star system. Usually, double black widows are found by gamma and X-ray emissions emitted by the central pulsar. However, for their discovery, the researchers used visible light: a flare from the system's companion star helped detect ZTF J1406+1222. 

Scientists have suggested that the day sidea companion star - the one facing the pulsar - can be many times hotter than its night side due to the constant high-energy radiation it receives from the pulsar. From this hypothesis it follows that the brightness of the companion star, when observed from the side, will constantly and strongly change.

For their research, astronomers usedoptical data from the Zwicky Transient Facility, an observatory in California that takes wide-angle images of the night sky. Scientists studied the brightness of stars in the images and looked for sudden changes of ten or more times occurring within a short time (an hour or less). 

Using this method, the researchers were able todiscover twelve known binary black widows. These observations confirmed the correctness of the hypothesis. After that, scientists discovered a star whose brightness changed 13 times every 62 minutes, indicating that it was probably part of a new binary system.

The researchers analyzed the data of the telescopeGaia and found that the double star was followed by another distant star. According to their calculations, this third star orbited the inner binary system every 10,000 years.

The researchers note that they have not yetmanaged to detect directly the gamma or x-ray emission of a pulsar in a binary system. Therefore, it is not yet possible to unequivocally attribute the system to black widows.

The only thing we know for sure is thatwe see a star whose day side is much hotter than the night side, and which revolves around something every 62 minutes. Everything seems to indicate that this is a double black widow. But there are a few strange things about it, so maybe it's something completely new.

Kevin Burge, head of research at MIT

The team plans to continue observing the new system, as well as using the optical method to search for more neutron stars and black widows in the sky.

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