Menu Close

Articles on Neutron stars

Displaying 1 - 20 of 39 articles

An artist’s impression of the the NGC 1851E binary system, looking over the shoulder of the dark mystery companion star. MPIfR; Daniëlle Futselaar (artsource.nl)

Black hole, neutron star or something new? We discovered an object that defies explanation

It’s too heavy to be a neutron star and too light to be a black hole. So what is it?
When two neutron stars merge and create a black hole, they produce a powerful blast of gamma rays. A. Simonnet (Sonoma State Univ.) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Unusual, long-lasting gamma-ray burst challenges theories about these powerful cosmic explosions that make gold, uranium and other heavy metals

Gamma-ray bursts occur when a massive star explodes or when two neutron stars merge. A newly discovered burst has puzzled astronomers, as it lasted much longer than astronomers would have expected.
An artist’s impression of the Double Pulsar system in which the two pulsars orbit each other every 2.5 hours and send out high-energy beams that sweep across the sky. Image credit: John Rowe Animations/CSIRO

We counted 20 billion ticks of an extreme galactic clock to give Einstein’s theory of gravity its toughest test yet

Astronomers watched a pair of pulsars for 16 years to test the theory of general relativity, which has stood unchallenged for over a century.
Ripples in space-time caused by massive events such this artist rendition of a pair of merging neutron stars. Carl Knox, OzGrav

New detections of gravitational waves brings the number to 11 – so far

More ripples in space-time have been detected from merging pairs of black holes, one of which was the most massive and distant gravitational-wave source ever observed.
Technicians prepare Swift’s UVOT for vibration testing on Aug. 1, 2002, more than two years before launch, in the High Bay Clean Room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Swift’s telescope reveals birth, deaths and collisions of stars through 1 million snapshots in UV

The Swift Observatory passed a milestone: 1 million snapshots of the universe. These exquisite and revealing pictures have captured the births and deaths of stars, gravitational waves and comets.

Top contributors

More