Video

Sco X-1, the Movie

This timelapse movie shows 56 hours of changing radio emission from the violent binary system known as Scorpius X-1. Sco X-1 is a star in orbit around a neutron star, the remnant of a supernova explosion. In June of 1999, Sco X-1 brightened and dimmed, and “lobes” of bright radio emission were pushed outward by jets at about half the speed of light. These lobes are made when the fast moving particles in the jet, created from the accretion disk of material in orbit around the dead star, collide with surrounding material caught in the flow. Notice at the start that one moving set of lobes disappears, but new lobes are ejected from the core a few hours later. The size scale is in billions of miles, because Scorpius X-1 covers a volume much larger than our Solar System.

Artist's impression of the detection of SGR 1806-20

Magnetar Animation

In this artist’s animation, the December 27, 2004 blast from SGR 1806-20 was the brightest outburst ever seen coming from an object beyond our own Solar System. Even at 50,000 light-years away, its burst of gamma rays and X-rays disturbed the Earth’s ionosphere, causing a sudden disruption in some radio communications. A magnetar is a superdense neutron star with a magnetic field thousands of trillions of times more intense than that of the Earth. Scientists believe that SGR 1806-20’s giant burst of energy was somehow triggered by a “starquake” in the neutron star’s crust that caused a catastrophic disruption in the magnetar’s magnetic field. The magnetic disruption “boiled off” particles from the star’s surface into a rapidly-expanding fireball.

Sco X-1, the Movie

Magnetar Animation

Scott Ransom: Part 7 General Relativity

Scott Ransom: Part 5 Recent Results

Scott Ransom: Part 4 Magnetic Fields

Scott Ransom: Part 3 Millisecond Pulsars

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