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Glossary term: Étoile à neutrons

Also known as pulsar

Description: Une étoile à neutrons est un vestige stellaire très dense et compact résultant de l'effondrement du cœur d'une étoile massive. Les étoiles d'une masse égale ou supérieure à huit masses solaires terminent leur évolution stellaire par l'effondrement de leur cœur, ce qui déclenche l'explosion d'une supernova. Le noyau effondré a une densité supérieure à celle de la plupart des noyaux atomiques et se compose principalement de neutrons. Ce dernier point est dû au fait que les protons et les électrons se combinent pour former des neutrons dans le cœur effondré extrêmement chaud et dense de l'étoile massive. La limite inférieure de la masse d'une étoile à neutrons est de 1,4 masse solaire, et la limite supérieure d'environ 3 masses solaires. Les étoiles à neutrons fortement magnétiques sont appelées magnétars. La grande majorité des étoiles à neutrons connues sont observées sous forme de pulsars radio.

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Term and definition status: The original definition of this term in English have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher
The translation of this term and its definition is still awaiting approval

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".

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A neutron star appears as a blue spot surrounded by shells of material which appear as red and green rings

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