Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets (IMAGE)
Caption
This artist’s impression depicts how nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed the jets blasting off from its magnetic polar regions.
[Image description: In the foreground, at the centre right, there is a very bright white ball, representing the neutron star. White/purple filaments are streaming out from its polar region. The ball is surrounded by a hazy white larger sphere, the corona, and further out by a disk with concentric bands of different colours, going from white in the inner disk to orange in the middle and to red-magenta in the outer region. An orange band connects the outer part of the disk to a large yellow-orange-red section of a sphere in the top left corner. This represents the star companion of the neutron star, that is feeding the disk around the bright white spherical body.]
Credit
Credit: Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam. License CC BY-SA 3.0
Usage Restrictions
Credit: Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam. License CC BY-SA 3.0
License
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