CSIRO telescope dons sunglasses to find brightest ever pulsar

May 3rd, 2022

Science Media Exchange (Scimex), Other, 03/05/2022
An international research team, including scientists at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, have used a new observation technique to discover the brightest extragalactic pulsar known, and it could even be the most luminous one ever found. First discovered in 1967, pulsars are remnants of massive stars and offer researchers potential applications in areas like random number generation and guidance systems for spacecraft. The research team used the ASKAP radio telescope, owned and operated by CSIRO, to apply a new method of seeking out pulsars. By using the astronomical version of ‘sunglasses’ to capture light that is polarised, they found a never-before seen pulsar that is 10 times brighter than any other detected outside our Galaxy.