These images are photos from the 3D model I did for the following video, taken in the former virtual world Amaryllis, now replaced by Sovaria Estates(Halcyon Simulator).

Showing the immediate surroundings of a pulsar was a scientific challenge. With, as usual, «simplified» (understand: false) explanations in popular science journals, a recurring problem and a plague for amateur scientists, who do not have direct access to the true views of real scientists.

☻ Thus a first animation showed a «circle of light», that is, luminous point rotating around the pulsar. But I realized that such an explanation does not hold: with the law of delayed potentials, the emissive zone had to be a spiral. So I redid my model...

☻... before I came across this article from Astrobites: A Pulsar’s Surface Map Gets a NICER Update, according to which the pulses actually come from the surface of the pulsar, that is a fixed point in the video. This finally simplified my work. And no, they obviously did not guessed how «astrobites» sounds like to a french ear, very serendipitously likpatous indeed, for the Likpas comics.

 

As to the black dwarf brushing the pulsar, it is my invention. But confirmed by an even bigger astrobite: Tiny Stars in a Tiny Orbit: A New Ultracompact Binary showing a red dwarf orbiting around a pulsar in half an hour, and having its matter abundantly stolen by the latter (at this point, it must have stopped its fusion reactions).

 

Added November 2022: At only 4000 light-years from Earth, PSR J1719-1438b is exactly that, a former white dwarf orbiting a pulsar, and reduced to a hot diamond core. Since the pulsar aspired most of its matter, it had lost its nature of white dwarf, and it reverted to normal matter. But it is still the most dense known body of classical matter, with a density of at least 23. The radiation of the nearby pulsar is keeping it hot.

 

 

This video was shot in the virtual world «Enchanted», Halcyon simulator (similar to Second Life, but better). It shows the pulsar (blinking) and the black dwarf (in facts red, made from incandescent coal), between which the MOTHER will pass. The red line is a remainder of gas aspirated by the pulsar, what the MOTHER calls «the sword of fire». It was dispersed in the explosion some minutes ago, and thus it is reforming progressively. It is not following an exact Keplerian ellipse, because in facts the black dwarf is rotating around the pulsar.

This animation needed to create a 3D model using Blender, and textures using Paint Shop Pro (yes, the version 9, that is twenty years I have it). The movements were done using the script system from Halcyon (Phlox), especially a special interpolator. The video was shot with Fraps, and mastered with Shotcut. The sound track was entirely done with Reason, from Propeller Head.

I am quite happy from the result, accounting from such poor means. Imagine if the great movie companies were using their billions to do real films, instead of their poor psychodrama, or their bad science-fiction with plenty of huge science errors.