The Lighthouse Model (3) ...

The following animation gives a more realistic picture of the lighthouse model for a pulsar. Click "Show Labels" to toggle labels for the initial frame on and off.

In this example, the pulsar is oriented at 45 degrees and the magnetic field axis is tilted by 30 degrees from the vertical. The right side shows schematically the light curve that we would expect for this example, with pulses appearing whenever the "lighthouse beam" sweeps over the observer.