An international team of scientists has uncovered the mysterious nature of PSR J2039-5617 using the Einstein @ Home distributed computing platform. It turned out that in the center of an unknown cosmic source of X-ray and gamma radiation there is a pulsar, which revolves around an evaporating star. This is reported in an article published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Researchers used the computing power of the Einstein @ Home project, which brings together the computers of thousands of volunteer users, to analyze data from the Fermi Space Telescope. This made it possible to reveal weak pulsations of gamma radiation from a neutron star. In the system, a pulsar heats up one side of a companion star that appears brighter and bluish. The pulsar’s gravitational pull also stretches the star, allowing astronomers to track changes in its apparent size as it rotates. The orbital period of the binary was 5.5 hours.
Pulsar J2039-5617 rotates around its axis at a speed of 377 times per second. Its radiation vaporizes the companion, which forms clouds of charged particles that absorb radio waves. It is because of this that the pulsating radio emission characteristic of a pulsar was not detected earlier, which made it difficult to determine the nature of the source.
Astronomers have known PSR J2039-5617 existed since 2014, and all data indicated that it included a neutron star, but this has not yet been proven.