Stille

{A radio observatory
inside a 40 km quiet zone}

{Tuned to/}
81.500 MHz · Stille

{Sound}

The Crab

Pulsar
PSR B0531+21

The heart of a star that Chinese astronomers watched explode in 1054. It turns thirty times a second.

03 / 06

← All stations {Each line = 100 pulses, folded}
Catalogue
PSR B0531+21
Type
Pulsar
We listen at
1400.000 MHz
Period
33.7 ms
Distance
≈ 6,500 light-years
Discovered
1968 (the explosion: 4 July 1054)
By
David Staelin & Edward Reifenstein, Green Bank
Position
05h 34m 31.9s
+22° 00′ 52″
From Stilledal
Circumpolar, just. Lowest at dawn.

In the summer of 1054 a new star appeared in Taurus, bright enough to see in daylight for three weeks. The court astronomers of the Song dynasty wrote it down. The Crab Nebula is what is left, and at its centre is this.

Thirty rotations a second is too fast to hear as clicks. In the headphones it becomes a tone, a buzz well below the lowest string of a cello.

Now and then it throws a giant pulse, hundreds of times brighter than the rest. When one arrives during a Listening Night, the astronomer on duty rings a bell.

{What it sounds like}

A low buzz, like a moth against glass.

{Headphones help. The sound is synthesized from the real period and profile.}