Dec 29, 2010 09:15 GMT  ·  By

Astronomers report the discovery of a new, peculiar phenomenon going on inside the Milky Way. Our galaxy is apparently being visited by a Black Widow pulsar, a rapidly-moving neutron star that is traveling at a speed of almost one million kilometers per hour

Due to this amazing speed, the object is creating ripples as it travels the 100,000 light-year-span of our galaxy. It is preceded by a bow shock wave, which it creates solely through its speed, and is followed by an impressive secondary shock wave.

The interactions between the two are creating a beautiful cocoon around the star, whose age has been estimated at around 1 billion years. The entire structure can be seen through optical telescopes.

The greenish crescent shape in the attached photo depicts the primary bow shock wave. Due to the tremendous pressure it exerts on the star, a secondary wave, depicted in reddish hues, is formed immediately behind it.

Together, the two are strong enough to sweep large amount of high-energy particles produced by the pulsar, and generate the cocoon seen here covering most of the image.

As part of the Black Widow class, this object is an extremely rapidly-rotating neutron star called a millisecond pulsar. One of the main traits such celestial bodies have is that they tend to emit intense high-energy radiation.

The reason why these pulsars spin so fast, astronomers believe, is because they continuously accrete mass from companion stars. Experts say that the speed of the stars' rotation is dictated by the mass they engulf.

In order to produce the new image, astronomers turned the the NASA Chandra X-ray telescope, which is especially suited for conducting investigations on black holes, neutron stars, pulsars and magnetars.

Despite its old age, the Black Widow millisecond pulsar (dubbed B1957+20) is just as effective in generating matter and antimatter particles as its younger counterparts, such as the Crab Nebula.

Analysis of the object also provided additional evidence to support the theory arguing that even neutron stars that are weakly magnetized can produce intense electromagnetic forces.

In turn, these forces act like enormous particle accelerators, pushing particles to high energies. This phenomenon creates pulsar winds, if the star itself rotates fast enough, Daily Galaxy reports.