Introduction to general relativity in a setting with comparatively strong gravitational fields. This has become possible thanks to precision observations of binary pulsars. In such a star system, two highly compact neutron stars orbit each other. At least one of them is a pulsar – an astronomical object that emits a tight beam of radiowaves. These beams strike the Earth at very regular intervals, similarly to the way that the rotating beam of a lighthouse means that an observer sees the lighthouse blink, and can be observed as a highly regular series of pulses. General relativity predicts specific deviations from the regularity of these
Neutron star towards the plane of curvature. In addition, high energy photons can interact with lower energy photons and the magnetic field for electron-positron pair production, which through electron–positron annihilation leads to further high energy photons. The radiation emanating from the magnetic poles of neutron stars can be described as "magnetospheric radiation", in reference to the magnetosphere of the neutron star. It is not to be confused with "magnetic dipole radiation", which is emitted because the magnetic axis is not aligned with the rotational axis, with a radiation frequency the same as the neutron star's rotational frequency. If the axis of rotation