Like anthropologists piecing together the human family tree, astronomers have found that a misfit “skeleton” of a star may link two different kinds of stellar remains. The mysterious object, called ...

Astronomers have caught a highly magnetic dead star, or "magnetar," in the Milky Way briefly acting like a pulsar, a type of neutron star that rapidly rotates. The magnetar put on its pulsar disguise ...

A teaspoon that weighs a billion tons? Welcome to the world of neutron stars the ultra-dense cores left after colossal supernovae. In this video, we break down how these objects form (from the iron ...

Magnetars are among the most bizarre and mysterious objects in the universe, packing in trillions of times more magnetic pull than the Earth or any magnet developed by humans. Scientists are still ...

Composite image of Swift J1818.0−1607, the youngest pulsar ever observed, as seen by the EPIC-pn camera on ESA’s XMM-Newton. The image combines observations in the following energy bands: 2–4 keV (red ...

Scientists have discovered that bizarre cosmic phenomena known as fast radio bursts are more likely to occur in huge galaxies than in smaller ones, in turn unraveling the secrets of how so-called ...

Magnetars are neutron stars characterized by some of the most powerful magnetic fields in the Universe, as well as their intense X-ray and gamma-ray emissions and outbursts. An international team of ...

Astronomers have added a new species to the neutron star zoo, showcasing the wide diversity among the compact magnetic remains of dead, once-massive stars. While it’s an oddball, some of this newfound ...

Astronomers think they may have found the most powerful pulsar to date in a distant galaxy. The fast-spinning neutron star — the dense remains of a once massive star — is just beginning to emerge from ...