Astronomers have found 13 new pulsars: one of them is not like everyone else

Astronomers led by Alessandro Ridolfi from the Cagliari Observatory in Italy report the discovery of 13 new

sources belonging to the pulsar family.They were found in the globular cluster NGC 1851, which is located at a distance of about 39,000 light years. The observation took place within the framework of the TRansients And Pulsars with MeerKAT (TRAPUM) project. The research results were published on the arXiv preprint server.

Pulsars are highly magnetized rotatingneutron stars emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation. Usually they are found by short bursts of radio emission; however, some of them are also observed with optical, X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes. The most rapidly rotating pulsars with a rotation period of less than 30 milliseconds are known as MSPs.

All 13 newly discovered pulsars are located in the mostinner regions of NGC 1851. Only one of them - NGC 1851I - is a standard pulsar, since its rotation period is 32.65 milliseconds. Other sources are MSPs with a rotation period of 2.82 to 6.63 milliseconds. Seven of the 13 objects turned out to be binary (including NGC 1851I), and the rest were isolated pulsars.

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TRAPUM—transients (ultra-fast bursts of energy at the beginning of each sound) and pulsars with the MeerKAT telescope