The essential features of black widow and redback binaries are that they place a normal but very low-mass star in close proximity to a millisecond pulsar, which has disastrous consequences for the star. Black widow systems contain stars that are both physically smaller and of much lower mass than those found in redbacks.
So far, astronomers have found at least 18 black widows and nine redbacks within the Milky Way, and additional members of each class have been discovered within the dense globular star clusters that orbit our galaxy.
One black widow system, named PSR J1311-3430 and discovered in 2012, sets the record for the tightest orbit of its class and contains one of the heaviest neutron stars known. The pulsar's featherweight companion, which is only a dozen or so times the mass of Jupiter and just 60 percent of its size, completes an orbit every 93 minutes – less time than it takes to watch most movies.
The side of the star facing the pulsar is heated to more than 21,000 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 12,000 C), or more than twice as hot as the sun's surface. Recent studies allow a range of values extending down to 2 solar masses for the pulsar, making it one of the most massive neutron stars known.
Watch the video to learn more about this system and its discovery from some of the scientists involved.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 344916, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11216/#media_group_344916", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "Learn how astronomers discovered PSR J1311−3430, a record-breaking black widow binary and the first of its kind discovered solely through gamma-ray observations.
Greenbank Telescope image credit: NRAO/AUI
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
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The pulsar's radio beacon vanished, while at the same time the system brightened fivefold in gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, according to measurements by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.The system, known as AY Sextantis, is located about 4,400 light-years away in the constellation Sextans. It pairs a 1.7-millisecond pulsar named PSR J1023+0038 — J1023 for short — with a star containing about one-fifth the mass of the sun. The stars complete an orbit in only 4.8 hours, which places them so close together that the pulsar will gradually evaporate its companion. To better understand J1023's spin and orbital evolution, the system was routinely monitored in radio. These observations revealed that the pulsar's radio signal had turned off and prompted the search for an associated change in its gamma-ray properties.What's happening, astronomers say, are the last sputtering throes of the pulsar spin-up process. Researchers regard the system as a unique laboratory for understanding how millisecond pulsars form and for studying details of how accretion takes place on neutron stars. In J1023, the stars are close enough that a stream of gas flows from the sun-like star toward the pulsar. The pulsar's rapid rotation and intense magnetic field are responsible for both the radio beam and its powerful pulsar wind. When the radio beam is detectable, the pulsar wind holds back the companion's gas stream, preventing it from approaching too closely. But now and then the stream surges, pushing its way closer to the pulsar and establishing an accretion disk. When gas from the disk falls to an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km), processes involved in creating the radio beam are either shut down or, more likely, obscured. Some of the gas may be accelerated outward at nearly the speed of light, forming dual particle jets firing in opposite directions. Shock waves within and along the periphery of these jets are a likely source of the bright gamma-ray emission detected by Fermi. || ", "release_date": "2014-07-22T10:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:50:44.050104-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 453317, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011600/a011609/transformerBinary_4196.jpg", "filename": "transformerBinary_4196.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Narrated video. Zoom into an artist's rendering of AY Sextantis, a binary star system whose pulsar switched from radio emissions to high-energy gamma rays in 2013. This transition likely means the pulsar's spin-up process is nearing its end.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "pixels": 2073600 } }, { "id": 11215, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11215/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "PSR J1311-3430 'Black Widow' Pulsar Animations", "description": "The essential features of black widow binaries, and their cousins, known as redbacks, are that they place a normal but very low-mass star in close proximity to a millisecond pulsar, which has disastrous consequences for the star. Black widow systems contain stars that are both physically smaller and of much lower mass than those found in redbacks.So far, astronomers have found at least 18 black widows and nine redbacks within the Milky Way, and additional members of each class have been discovered within the dense globular star clusters that orbit our galaxy. These animations show artist's impressions of one system, named PSR J1311-3430. Discovered in 2012, J1311 sets the record for the tightest orbit of its class and contains one of the heaviest neutron stars known. The pulsar's featherweight companion, which is only a dozen or so times the mass of Jupiter and just 60 percent of its size, completes an orbit every 93 minutes – less time than it takes to watch most movies. Recent studies allow a range of values extending down to 2 solar masses for the pulsar, still among the highest-known for neutron stars. || ", "release_date": "2014-02-20T11:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:10.879991-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 467615, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011200/a011215/Cruz_deWilde-bwPulsar_topX.00038.jpg", "filename": "Cruz_deWilde-bwPulsar_topX.00038.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Slower version of the above animation.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }