A Lonely Neutron Star
How massive can a star get without imploding into a black hole?
These limits are being tested by the discovery of a lone neutron star in space. Observations by the
Hubble Space Telescope
released Wednesday,
have been combined with previous observations by the
X-ray ROSAT observatory and
ultraviolet
EUVE
observatory for the isolated star at the location of the arrow.
Astronomers are able to directly infer the star's size from measurements of its
unblended brightness, temperature, and an upper limit on the distance.
Assuming that the object is a
neutron star of typical mass,
some previous theories of neutron star structure would have predicted
an implosion that would have created a
black hole. That this
neutron star
even exists therefore allows a window to the extreme
conditions that exist in the interiors of neutron stars.