Astronomers Find Evidence Of Most Powerful Pulsar In Distant Galaxy

The object, called VT 1137-0337, is in a dwarf galaxy 395 million light-years from Earth

Astronomers using data from the VLA Sky Survey have discovered one of the youngest known neutron stars possibly as young as only 14 years. The dense remnant of a supernova explosion was revealed when bright radio emission powered by the pulsar's powerful magnetic field emerged from behind a thick shell of debris from the explosion.

The object, called VT 1137-0337, is in a dwarf galaxy 395 million light-years from Earth. It first appeared in a VLASS image made in January of 2018. It did not appear in an image of the same region made by the VLA's FIRST Survey in 1998. It continued to appear in later VLASS observations in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022.

"What we're most likely seeing is a pulsar wind nebula," said Dillon Dong, a Caltech graduate graduate who will begin a Jansky Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) later this year. A pulsar wind nebula is created when the powerful magnetic field of a rapidly spinning neutron star accelerates surrounding charged particles to nearly the speed of light.

"Based on its characteristics, this is a very young pulsar -- possibly as young as only 14 years, but no older than 60 to 80 years," said Gregg Hallinan, Dong's Ph.D advisor at Caltech. The scientists reported their findings at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Pasadena, California.