A pair of pulsars

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The square shows two pulsars, knitted in white wool on a grey wool background. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars that emit radio light in beams, which makes a lighthouse like effect (the pulsars are shown by the circles and the beams by the wedges coming from them).

Royal Astronomical Society

Licence type

Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Title: A pair of pulsars.

Description: The square shows two pulsars. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars that emit radio light in beams, which makes a lighthouse like effect (the pulsars are shown by the circles and the beams by the wedges coming from them).

Maker: Hannah Middleton, Postdoctoral researcher

Techniques used: The background is a knitted square (moss stitch) and the pulsars are knitted shapes sewn onto the background (circles and wedges in stockinette stitch). It is sewn onto a fabric backing to keep the shape.

Inspiration: "I'm a keen knitter but have never done much embroidery or sewing, so I thought I would try a knitted square. I choose two pulsars for the design - pulsars were first discovered just over 50 years ago by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. They are interesting stars in their own right, but they are also very useful tools for astronomy as they have been used to test general relativity, show evidence of gravitational waves, and are being used to search for very low frequency gravitational waves from massive black hole binaries, besides other uses as well!"

Twitter: @hannahmidd8

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