In August of 2006, at the behest of Robert Rutledge of McGill University, a group of astronomers pointed their NASA sponsored Swift X-ray telescope array toward an area of the Milky Way where Rutledge first detected a curious X-ray source.
What the scientists found was a lone neutron star in the constellation of Ursa Minor and at a distance of only between 250 to 1,000 light years from Earth.
There were only seven known isolated neutron stars on record. This one, nicknamed Calvera, after the bad guy in the Yul Brenner “The Magnificent Seven” film became number eight. The other seven were clumped together as the Magnificent Seven, thus this new designation for the eighth.
Calvera is the first isolated neutron star ever sited this close to our planet.
A neutron star is one that does not have supernova remnants, binary companions or radio pulsations, and are too small to form black holes. At least, that is the case as far as our current level of scientific expertise can determine. Finding an isolated one is indeed rare, but discovering one this close to Earth is remarkable.
“Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind,” Rutledge said.
[To view the detailed make-up of a neutron star – click on image to enlarge view]
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