伽玛射线脉冲星的研究历程(只第一段)

Science 上的一篇文章.因为权限问题只能看到这么一段简介,所以就只翻译了这么一段,就当成是个简短的新闻吧.

Gamma-Ray Pulsars Old and New
Jules P. Halpern

A flood of results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launchedon 11 June 2008, is changing the way that we view neutron stars. TheLarge Area Telescope (LAT), the main instrument on Fermi, detectsphotons of energy between 0.1 and 100 GeV emitted from spinning neutronstars known as radio pulsars, from supermassive black holes in the"blazar" class of active galactic nuclei, and from other high-energysources. By timing the arrival of photons from gamma ray–bright pointsin the Galaxy, Fermi is discovering new pulsars whose existence wasonly conjectured. Sixteen such "gamma ray–only" pulsars, rotatingbetween 2 and 20 times per second, are reported on page 840 in thisissue (1).In a companion paper on page 848, the detection of pulsed gamma raysfrom eight nearby radio "millisecond pulsars" rotating faster than 200times per second is described (2). Complementing thesediscoveries, Fermi has detected a steady glow of gamma rays from theglobular star cluster 47 Tucanae, as described on page 845 (3); this region is thought to harbor dozens of millisecond pulsars.

费米伽玛射线空间望远镜于2008年6月11日发射,它源源不断地带来的结果正在改变着我们观察中子星的方式.大天区望远镜(Large Area Telescope, LAT)是费米上面的主要仪器,它探测来自带有自转的中子星,即射电脉冲星,来自”耀变”类型的活动星系核中的超大质量黑洞,以及来自其它高能的源的能量在0.1到100GeV之间的光子.通过测定光子从银河系内的伽玛射线亮的地方传播过来所需要的时间,费米正在发现一批新的,人们以前只是推测会存在的脉冲星.本刊的第840页报导了16个这样的”仅发射伽玛射线”的脉冲星,其自转速度在每秒2到20圈之间.在848页一篇文章中描述了人们对临近的8个毫秒脉冲星的探测,这些脉冲星的自转速度超过每秒200周.除了这些发现,费米还探测到了杜鹃座47球状星团的一个稳定的伽玛射线余辉,如845页文中所述.人们认为这个区域藏有许多的毫秒脉冲星.

e问原文出处:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/325/5942/821