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Goddard TV Video Tape: G2014-055 -- Transformer Pulsar

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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 Center Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel . For complete transcript, click here . NASA's Fermi Catches a 'Transformer' Pulsar
This animation illustrates one possible model for the dramatic changes observed from J1023. The two stars of AY Sextantis orbit closely enough that a stream of gas flows from the sun-like star toward the pulsar. The pulsar's rapid rotation and intense magnetic field produce both the radio beam and the high-energy wind, which is eroding its companion. When the radio beam (green) is detectable, the pulsar wind holds back the companion's gas stream, preventing it from approaching too closely. Now and then the stream surges, reaches toward the pulsar and establishes an accretion disk. Processes involved in producing the radio beam are either shut down or, more likely, obscured. Meanwhile, some of the gas falling toward the pulsar 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 (magenta) detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center PSR J1023, A 'Transformer' Pulsar--Animations