Glossary term: Neutron Star
Description: A neutron star is a very dense and compact stellar remnant that is left following the collapse of a massive star's core. Stars with masses of about eight solar masses or more end their stellar evolution with their cores collapsing, triggering a supernova explosion. The collapsed core has a density larger than that of most atomic nuclei and is comprised primarily of neutrons. This latter point is due to protons and electrons combining to form neutrons in the extremely hot and dense collapsed core of the massive star. The lower mass limit of a neutron star is 1.4 solar masses, and the upper limit is about 3 solar masses – above this the object would collapse to a black hole. Highly magnetic neutron stars are known as magnetars. The vast majority of known neutron stars are observed as radio pulsars.
Related Terms:
See this term in other languages
Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher
The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".
If you notice a factual error in this glossary definition then please get in touch.
In Other Languages
- Arabic: النجم النيوتروني
- German: Neutronenstern
- Persian: ستاره نوترونی
- French: Étoile à neutrons
- Italian: Stella di neutroni
- Japanese: 中性子星 (external link)
- Simplified Chinese: 中子星
- Traditional Chinese: 中子星
Related Media
Death of a massive star
Caption: A multi-wavelength image taken with telescopes on the Earth and in space of a neutron star within our neighbouring Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. A neutron star (seen here as the blue spot surrounded by a red ring) is the final product of gravitational collapse, compression and explosion of a massive star, left embedded in its supernova remnant (in green).
Credit: ESO/NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/F. Vogt et al.
credit link
License: CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
The Crab Pulsar
Caption: At the heart of the Crab Nebula, situated approximately 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, lies the Crab Nebula Pulsar. This is remnant of a massive star that exploded at the end of its life. This happened several thousand years ago but the light from this explosion only reached the Earth in the year 1054. This celestial event was viewed by people across the world with many different societies noting it in their records.
The Crab Nebula Pulsar rotates about 30 times per second and emits light in many different wavelengths, including the visible spectrum. It is roughly one and a half times the mass of the sun but the force of the explosion that formed it crammed this mass into a tiny space, roughly ten kilometres in radius.
This image is a composite of several observations conducted by the Gemini North observatory in Hawaii, USA. The pulsar can be seen at the center. The observations that this image was created from were taken over a period of five years. Data from 2009 is shown in blue and data from 2014 is shown in red. Over this time material has flowed away from the pulsar resulting in this colored ripple effect. Again the colors do not show real colors in the image, the ripples show the positions of the shockwaves as they moved away from the pulsar and hit into the surrounding gas.
Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AUR, Jen Miller, Travis Rector, Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin
credit link
License: CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
