Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers have seen before
January 27, 2022A team mapping radio waves in the Universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it’s unlike anything astronomers have seen before. The team who discovered it think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf—collapsed cores of stars—with an ultra-powerful magnetic field.
Astronomers witness the dragging of space-time in stellar cosmic dance
January 31, 2020After almost 20 years of patient monitoring, an international team of astronomers have witnessed the very fabric of space-time being dragged around a rapidly-rotating exotic star known as a white dwarf.
Star in closest orbit ever seen around black hole
March 14, 2017Astronomers have found evidence of a star that whips around a likely black hole twice an hour. This could be the tightest orbital dance ever seen by a black hole and a companion star in our own Milky Way galaxy.