Black Widow Pulsar Spinning
Perhaps one of the most amazing images taken, trying to capture a spinning black widow pulsar is nearly impossible. That alone should make this one of the most breathtaking photos captured by NASA and the ESA. However, some might be unaware of what the Black Widow Pulsar actually is. It is located 6,500 lightyears away from Earth (scary close in space terms) and orbits a brown dwarf star companion. A pulsar itself is simply a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. The Black Widow Pulsar is known as a “millisecond pulsar.” Thus, it rotates for less than 10 milliseconds.
There are other versions of pulsars beyond this, but we won’t bore you with those details. The origin of how these specific pulsars form is believed to be via a rapidly rotating neutron star that is spun up through the accretion of matter from a nearby companion star. That is also likely why it is called a “recycled pulsar” too. In the case of the Black Widow, it is actually an eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar likely formed by the destruction of a companion star by the neutron star, giving it the “black widow” name. The pulsars surrounding it also took on the same name. Our image above simply shows the pulsar spinning, which is pretty awesome to see.