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Stars. Little lights in the high dark sky that have fascinated and inspired from time immemorial. There are legends about the starry sky, songs and poems are written, and it is customary to collect sparkling dots from the sky for the woman you love.
With the development of science, a person learns more and more about distant giants. It is already clear that you cannot give a lady a star: where will she put a fireball of a couple of tens of thousands of kilometers? But you can examine them in the latest telescopes, measure the distance to them, their diameter, and even guess the temperature.
Learning more and more, we imagine stars as huge Suns (although our star is considered a dwarf), but there are enough small stars in the Universe. Here is a list of bright crumbs of our world. We present you the 10 smallest stars in the Universe: a ranking of tiny pulsars in the solar system and other galaxies – their names and photos.
10 GRW +70 8247, 3300 km
Approximately 43 km from Earth, in the constellation with the romantic name Draco, a white dwarf shines with the designation GRW +70 8247. It was discovered back in the 19th century, but then they could not give him any characteristics. Only in 1934 G.P. Kuiper identified it as a white dwarf.
Further observations shed more light on this celestial body. So, in 1970, it turned out that GRW +70 8247 emits light that is circularly polarized. Thus, it became the first known white dwarf with a magnetic field.
9. XTE J1650-500 B, 24 km
At all XTE J1650-500 B – this is not just a star, but the so-called binary system, that is, a system consisting of two celestial bodies. In this case, it is one of the smallest known black holes in the universe and an X-ray source. The star in question is the very source.
It’s a blue-white star that’s slowly being swallowed up by the nearby black hole XTE J1650-500 B, which sounds a little sad. But scientists got an excellent opportunity to observe how a black hole grows, which now has a mass of only 5-10 Suns. The distance from Earth is 15 light years.
8. PSR B1937+21, 18 km
PSR B1937 + 21 is a pulsar located in the small constellation Vulpecula. The name of the constellation in Latin means “small fox”, although it is more commonly referred to simply as a fox.
The star was discovered in 1982. Scientists were surprised to find that PSR B1937+21 spins over 600 revolutions per minute, making it the first so-called millisecond pulsar known to science. And until 2007, it remained the fastest rotating star in the universe that could be detected.
Pulsars are quite stable in their rotation and emitted radiation, but PSR B1937+21 periodically emits particularly strong flashes, which prompts scientists to return to the study of pulsars again.
7. PSR J1748-2446ad, 15 km
PSR J1748-2446ad – the same pulsar that took the palm of leadership in terms of rotation speed from the previous star in our list, PSR B1937 + 21. PSR J1748-2446ad makes 707 rpm. It is located in the constellation Sagittarius at a distance of 18 light years from the solar system.
Its mass is typical for pulsars and is approximately equal to two Suns, but due to its small diameter, less than 16 km, the star develops a truly monstrous speed, about a quarter of the speed of light.
PSR J1748-2446ad is not alone, it is part of a dual system. Its “companion” is a star, the radius of which is 5-6 times greater than the radius of the Sun. Most of the time, the star’s light outshines the pulsar.
6. Pulsar in Sails, 12 km
Pulsar PSR J0835-4510 associated with supernova remnants. His discovery occurred in 1968, and it brought important evidence to science: pulsars are directly related to supernova explosions.
Pulsar in Sails has one of the brightest radiation in the gamma range. On small videos provided to us by observatories, you can see how it emits two pulses in one radio pulse. Makes a little more than 11 revolutions per second. The radiation of some stars is recorded and translated into sound. So it happened with the pulsar in Sails. Its “sound” became part of the composer Gerard Grisey’s melody, Le noir de l’étoile.
5. XTE J1739-285, 10.9 km
Sometimes XTE J1739-285 called the fastest pulsar. A number of scientists conducted experiments that showed that it rotates at a speed of more than 1000 revolutions per minute. But with repeated experiments, it has not yet been possible to obtain the same indicators.
There is also an opinion that XTE J1739-285 may turn out to be a quark star, the matter of which has passed from a neural state to a quark state. The pulsar is located in the constellation Ophiuchus at a distance of 39 light years from Earth.
4. Geminga, 10 km
«This is not” – this is how the name of this pulsar is translated from the Milanese dialect. And the thing is that when it was discovered in 1975 by two satellites in a row, scientists could not determine what kind of celestial body it was. And they actually called it “nothing”.
Only in 1992, with the help of a satellite, it was possible to detect pulsating X-ray radiation, and in 1996 to determine Heming as a radio pulsar with radiation in the gamma and ultraviolet ranges. It got the code name PSR J0633 + 1746, although he remained one of the relatively few stars who were lucky enough to have a beautiful name.
Geminga is one of the brightest pulsars and is fairly close to Earth, only 250 parsecs away.
3. PSR B0531+21, 10 km
In 1054, a star, now called SN 1054, burned in the sky, and then exploded. In 1968, a small pulsar was discovered, which was identified with the remnants of that same supernova.
The pulsar is only 10 km in diameter, its rotation speed is 30 revolutions per second. It is located at a distance of 6000 light years (2000 parsecs) in the Crab Nebula. It is constant in its radiation, therefore, it is guided by it when calibrating the equipment.
The radiation from the pulsar, colliding with the nebula, creates a shock wave, and these waves are constantly changing, literally mesmerizing observers. There are assumptions about the presence of a nearby planet, since rotation is sometimes violated, but this hypothesis has not yet been proven.
2. PSR B1257+12, 10 km
PSR B1257 + 12 located at a distance of just under 2500 light years from the Sun. It became the first pulsar around which a planetary system was discovered. In 1990, when observing, failures in the delivery of impulses were noticeable, and frequency changes were explained by the rotation of two planets with a large mass around the star. Another was later discovered.
Their origin is not clear, and the rotation period is somewhat reminiscent of Mercury, Venus and the Earth. Initially, the planets were called plainly A, B, C (and the hypothetical dwarf D), but now they are given the poetic names Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor, and the star itself is called Lich.
Scientists admit the existence of life on planets. Of course, under the heavy rain of ions that wash the planets, no carbon life will be saved, but in the depths, under a layer of ice, some life forms can exist.
1. PSR J0348+0432 A, 6.5 km
PSR J0348+0432 A is a small neural pulsar located in a binary system with a white dwarf. It is located at a distance of 2100 parsecs in the constellation Taurus. With the help of precise spectroscopy, the mass of the pulsar was determined: it is equal to two solar masses.
The discovery of the pulsar is of great importance for science: scientists were able to test the general theory of relativity, and the numbers calculated with its help were actually confirmed.