On this day in space: Feb. 24, 1968: First pulsar discovered by Jocelyn Bell

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On Feb. 24, 1968, an astronomy grad student Jocelyn Bell announced that she had discovered the first pulsar.

On Feb. 24, 1968, an astronomy grad student Jocelyn Bell announced that she had discovered the first pulsar.

Jocelyn Bell and her remarkable discovery of the first pulsar is the subject of a new video developed by the creators of the new documentary, "Einstein and Hawking: Unlocking The Universe."

The trajectories of Pioneer 10 and 11 as well as Voyager 1 and 2 on their varied routes out of the Solar System. (Image credit: Science Channel)

At first she and her advisor, Anthony Hewish, thought it could have come from aliens. They ruled out that option when they found another signal coming from a different part of the sky. Bell and Hewish found four pulsars before publishing their findings, but they still had no explanation.

Scientists have since figured out that pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that radiate narrow beams of light in opposite directions.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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