The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the discovery of a unique triple-star system involving pulsar J0435+3233. This system, identified using the FAST telescope, is the first known example of a primordial pulsar triple system currently undergoing evolution.
The system consists of a millisecond pulsar, a white dwarf, and a sun-like star. The pulsar rotates at 312 revolutions per second with a period of 3.2 milliseconds. It orbits the white dwarf every 8 days in a nearly circular path, while the third star orbits further out.
Researchers noted that the pulsar's rotation period increases by 1 nanosecond annually, a rate significantly higher than typical pulsars. This anomaly led scientists to investigate the system further. The pulsar was initially detected in 2020 through the FAST drift-scan survey.
The team monitored the system for five years, collecting 192 sets of observational data. By integrating these findings with optical and gamma-ray telescope data, they confirmed the triple-star structure. The system originated from the same nebula and remains in an active evolutionary state.
This discovery provides a rare opportunity to observe the evolution of a triple-star system directly. It serves as a valuable sample for studying stellar dynamics and binary mass exchange theories, highlighting the high sensitivity of the FAST telescope in detecting dense celestial objects.
