Astronomers Solve Mystery of Andromeda’s Hard X-Rays

The Andromeda galaxy (also known as Messier 31) features a dominant source of hard X-rays, but its identity was mysterious until now. An international team of scientists, led by astronomers at Johns Hopkins University, has successfully identified an object responsible for this high-energy radiation.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers Solve Mystery of Andromeda’s Hard X-Rays

The Andromeda galaxy (also known as Messier 31) features a dominant source of hard X-rays, but its identity was mysterious until now. An international team of scientists, led by astronomers at Johns Hopkins University, has successfully identified an object responsible for this high-energy radiation.

more…

“Pulsar. Its spectrum is very similar to known pulsars in our Milky Way Galaxy. According to the team, Swift J0042.6+4112 is likely in a binary system, in which material from a stellar companion gets pulled onto the pulsar, spewing high-energy radiation as the material heats up. We didn’t know what it was until we looked at it with NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)”.

Good. Glad that’s settled. I’d like to see what Fermi says about it, whether it shows up in gamma rays, but it’s probably too close to the galaxy’s black hole to distinguish with Fermi.