Astronomy

A New Class of Dead Star?

‘Nature Astronomy’ reports the discovery of a radio-emitting neutron star with an abnormally long spin period

Not the subject of this story. A neutron star located within the remains of a supernova — known as 1E 0102.2–7219 (E0102 for short) — in the Small Magellanic Cloud, located 200,000 light years from Earth.. Image Credits: X-ray (NASA/CXC/ESO/F.Vogt et al); Optical (ESO/VLT/MUSE & NASA/STScI)

Some neutron star basics

Neutron stars have a radius on the order of 10 kilometres with a mass of about 1.4 solar masses. They result from the supernova…