Astrophiz192 - Pulsars Stripped Bare

Astrophiz Astronomy Podcasts

Today we're speaking with Dr. Marcus Lower, who is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Australia's National Science Agency, the CSIRO. His research primarily focuses on pulsars … rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles. He's the principal investigator of a Pulsar Timing Project, which uses the CSIRO, Parkes Murriyang radio telescope to understand the long-term behaviour of neutron stars and how they can be used to study the interstellar medium. Marcus is the lead author in a just-published Nature Astronomy paper using the 64-meter Parkes-Murriyang dish and also the monster 76-meter Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Manchester to reveal really mystifying behaviours of Pulsar XTE J1810-197, which we have never seen anything remotely like this before.