Neutron Stars: Crash Course Astronomy #32

2015-09-17

[public] 2.05M views, 34.7K likes, 569 dislikes audio only

In the aftermath of an 8-20 solar mass star’s demise, we find a weird little object known as a neutron star. Neutron stars are incredibly dense, spin rapidly, and have very strong magnetic fields. Some of them we see as pulsars, flashing in brightness as they spin. Neutron stars with the strongest magnetic fields are called magnetars and are capable of colossal bursts of energy that can be detected over vast distances.

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Chapters:

Introduction: Neutron Stars 00:00

Electron Degeneracy 0:51

Neutron Degeneracy 1:28

Neutron Star Characteristics 2:24

Pulsars 5:56

Magnetars 8:15

Review 11:48

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PHOTOS/VIDEOS

Star Burst https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11447 [credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center]

X-ray Images of G292.0+1.8 http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/animations/snr.html/?page=8 [credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/S.Park et al.; Optical: Pal.Obs. DSS]

Neutron star cross section https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neutron_star_cross_section.jpg [credit: NASA]

Fermi Spots 'Superflares' in the Crab Nebula https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDhdwgK218E [credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center]

What is a pulsar? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjLk_72V9Bw [credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center]

Jocelyn Bell http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/2013/03/20/1960-discovery-of-pulsars/ [credit: National Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library]

Beacons of X-ray Light https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p2OGc6a_TQ [credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Chandra Time-Lapse Movie http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0052/animations.html [credit: NASA/CXC/ASU/J.Hester et al.]

NASA's Fermi Satellite Finds Hints of Starquakes in Magnetar 'Storm' http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-fermi-satellite-finds-hints-of-starquakes-in-magnetar-storm [credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger]

NASA's Swift Reveals New Phenomenon in a Neutron Star http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/new-phenom.html#.Vcp-6flVhBe [credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center]

Cosmic Explosion Second Only to the Sun in Brightness https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=20077 [credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab]