OTD In Space – February 24: Pulsars First Discovered
- 2 months ago
On February 24, 1968, an astronomy grad student Jocelyn Bell announced that she had discovered the first pulsar.
A few months earlier, she noticed what she called a "bit of scruff" in the data from her telescope. A signal was sending pulses every 1.3 seconds. At first she and her advisor, Anthony Hewish, thought it could have come from aliens. They ruled out that option when they found another signal coming from a different part of the sky. Bell and Hewish found four pulsars before publishing their findings, but they still had no explanation. Scientists have since figured out that pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that radiate narrow beams of light in opposite directions.
A few months earlier, she noticed what she called a "bit of scruff" in the data from her telescope. A signal was sending pulses every 1.3 seconds. At first she and her advisor, Anthony Hewish, thought it could have come from aliens. They ruled out that option when they found another signal coming from a different part of the sky. Bell and Hewish found four pulsars before publishing their findings, but they still had no explanation. Scientists have since figured out that pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that radiate narrow beams of light in opposite directions.