An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

A → pulsar with a period of 59 milliseconds (17 pulses per second) moving around a compact companion in an elongated orbit (period 7.75 hours). It is thought that the companion is probably also a → neutron star with the same mass as the pulsar (1.4 solar masses). The orbit is gradually shrinking because of → gravitational radiation, as predicted by the theory of → general relativity. See also → binary pulsar, → millisecond pulsar.

Etymology (EN): Named after the American physicists Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor of Princeton University, who discovered the pulsar in 1974, for which they shared the 1993 Nobel prize in physics; → pulsar.