Pulsars emit radiation from the radio through to x-rays and even gamma ray wavebands. The currently accepted picture is of a rapidly spinning neutron star whose magnetic and rotation axes are not aligned. Pulsars have strong magnetic fields, as high as about 70,000,000,000,000 Gauss (blue doughnut). This is a huge field (the Sun is only a few Gauss and a fridge magnet is not more than 100 Gauss). Radiation is emitted near the magnetic poles as two narrow hollow beams (purple). Pulsars have often been compared to tilted light-houses; if the pulsar happens to be oriented in such a way that the radiation beam sweeps across Earth, we see the pulse, otherwise we do not.
