Young and getting cooler: The early life of a neutron star
Scientists can use observed temperature changes to probe what's
going on in the neutron star's core. April 19, 2010 Provided by
the Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom April 19, 2010
Image of Cassiopeia A taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Photo by NASA/CXC/MIT/UMass Amherst/M. D. Stage et al.
Observations of how the youngest-known neutron star has cooled
over the past decade are giving astronomers new insights into
the interior of these superdense dead stars. Wynn Ho, of the
University of Southampton, and Craig Heinke, of the University
of Alberta in Canada, measured the temperature of the neutron
star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant using data obtained
by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory between 2000 and 2009. "This
is the first time that astronomers have been able to watch a
young neutron star cool steadily over time," said Ho. "Chandra
has given us a snapshot of the temperature roughly every 2 years
for the past decade, and we ha