An international team led by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) has observed unusual flickering in the pulsar PSR B1508+55, revealing structured, filament-like gas in the interstellar medium about 430 light-years from Earth.
Using the Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany and FAST in China, the researchers found that the pulsar’s signal is stretched into a narrow line rather than a blurred shape, indicating ordered structures in the intervening gas.
The study also demonstrates a new, highly efficient observational technique for achieving very high-resolution imaging of scintillation effects without large global telescope networks. The result is published in A&A (DOI).
Read the full press release here.
Image: The linear structure is the visible scattering of the pulsar PSR B1508+55, which is located at the center of the image.… [more] © Tim Sprenger / MPIfR