Recent Comments

    magnetar tagged posts

    NASA’s Fermi telescope reveals the power source behind monster supernovae

    May 28, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Composite showing optical and gamma-ray observations of SN 2017egm
    This composite image shows two views of SN 2017egm, in visible light (inset) and gamma rays (background). The optical image shows the supernova — the brightest object in the scene — and its host galaxy on July 1, 2017. The background map shows a wide area of the sky surrounding the supernova’s position. Brighter colors indicate greater statistical likelihood that gamma rays are associated with the explosion. The map includes gamma rays detected by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope from July 5, 2017, to Oct. 25, 2017, or from 43 to 155 days after the supernova was discovered.
    Background, NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration and Acero et. al. 2026; inset, NOT+ALFSOC/Bose et al. 2020

    NASA’s Fermi telescope has detected what may be the first confirmed gamma-ray signal from a superluminous su...

    Read More

    A Recent Fast Radio Burst calls into Question what Astronomers Believed They Knew

    January 27, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers thought they understood fast radio bursts. A recent one calls that into question.
    The location of the fast radio burst, indicated by the oval outlines, is on the outskirts of a massive elliptical galaxy, the yellow oval at right.Gemini Observatory

    Astronomer Calvin Leung was excited last summer to crunch data from a newly commissioned radio telescope to precisely pinpoint the origin of repeated bursts of intense radio waves—so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs)—emanating from somewhere in the northern constellation Ursa Minor.

    Leung, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes eventually to understand the origins of these mysterious bursts and use them as probes to trace the large-scale structure of the universe, a key to its origin and evolution...

    Read More

    Cosmic Flashes pinpointed to a Surprising Location in Space

    February 25, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers have been surprised by the closest source of mysterious flashes in the sky called fast radio bursts. Precision measurements with radio telescopes reveal that the bursts are made among old stars, and in a way that no one was expecting. The source of the flashes, in nearby spiral galaxy M81, is the closest of its kind to Earth.

    Fast radio bursts are unpredictable, extremely short flashes of light from space. Astronomers have struggled to understand them ever since they were first discovered in 2007. So far, they have only ever been seen by radio telescopes.

    Each flash lasts only thousandths of a second. Yet each one sends out as much energy as the Sun gives out in a day. Several hundred flashes go off every day, and they have been seen all over the sky...

    Read More

    Chandra Studies Extraordinary Magnetar

    January 11, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This image contains an exceptional magnetar, a type of neutron star with very powerful magnetic fields.

    In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an exclusive family of exotic objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory help support the idea that it is also a pulsar, meaning it emits regular pulses of light.

    Magnetars are a type of neutron star, an incredibly dense object mainly made up of tightly packed neutron, which forms from the collapsed core of a massive star during a supernova.

    What sets magnetars apart from other neutron stars is that they also have the most powerful known magnetic fields in the universe. For context, the strength of our planet’s magnetic field has a value of about one Gauss, while a refrigerator magnet measures about 100 Gauss...

    Read More