Stellar Odd Couple Makes Striking Flares
-
- Visualizations by:
- Walt Feimer
-
- Written by:
- Francis Reddy
- View full credits
Every 3.4 years, pulsar B1259-63 dives twice through the gas disk surrounding the massive blue star it orbits. With each pass, it produces gamma rays. During the most recent event, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope observed that the pulsar's gamma-ray flare was much more intense the second time it plunged through the disk. Astronomers don't yet know why.
For the B1259 binary animation, go here.
Short narrated video about B1259.
Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel.
For complete transcript, click here.
For More Information
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. However, each image should be credited as indicated above.
-
Animators
- Walt Feimer (KBR Wyle Services, LLC) [Lead]
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
-
Illustrator
- Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park)
-
Science writer
- Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park) [Lead]
-
Video editor
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
-
Scientist
- Aous Abdo (George Mason University)
-
Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
-
Narrator
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:-
Odd Couple Binary
(ID: 2011075)
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 4:00AM
Produced by - Robert Crippen
Datasets used in this visualization
-
Fermi
ID: 687
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.