Black Widow Pulsar
The Black Widow Pulsar is an eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar in the Milky Way. Discovered back in 1988, it is located roughly 6,500 light-years away from Earth. It orbits with a brown dwarf companion with a period of 9.2 hours with an eclipse duration of approximately 20 minutes. When it was discovered it was the first such pulsar known. The prevailing theoretical explanation for the system implied that the companion is being destroyed by the gravitational environment caused by the neutron star, and so the sobriquet black widow was applied to the object. Subsequent to this, other objects with similar features have been discovered, and the name has been applied to the class of millisecond pulsars with an ablating companion.
Later observations of the object showed a bow shock in H-alpha and a smaller-in-extent shock seen in X-rays, indicating a forward velocity of approximately a million kilometers per hour.
In 2010 it was estimated that the neutron star's mass was at least, and possibly as high as .Gallery
Artist impressions of the black widow pulsar and its environment.
