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Space watchers spot pulsar eating a star

Astronomers using NASA's Swift and Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellites have discovered a stellar skeleton, a remnant of a dying star that is being consumed by its pulsar companion. So little of the star's original material is left that it now barely masses more than Jupiter. Artist depiction. A pulsar tears into a …

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Stuart Gray

Correct English

Excellent use of the word "masses". Well done that journalist.

Daniel Winstone

25,000 years ago

Is what we're seeing today. It's a shame we can't really get closer to the event and relay the images in double...more than that even quick time.

I wonder if it's even there any more?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Shame on you.

An article on pulsars which doesn't mention Jocelyn Bell Burnell?

Huh!

Stuart Gray

25,000 light years away...

...only equals 25,000 years ago if the speed of light has remained constant throughout that time - which Einstein doubted.

peter

It might have been a great uses of massess...

...but it was missed opportunity to talk about Roche Lobe Overflow..

Michael H.F. Wilkinson

We REALY do not want to get any closer!

Given the physics of such systems, in particular the strong X-rays and enormous tidal forces, I think 25,000 ly (or about 7,700 pc) is quite close enough!

Luther Blissett

I never read an article about an artist's impression before

The ultimate simulation of a news story. About a simulacrum too! Is this a record?

(Like others, I don't believe in neutron stars whizzing around at the rate of 1 Lucy per second, but in plasma in hydrostatic equilibrium and behaving as a relaxation oscillator).

A. Merkin

Flashing, burnt-out star caught on camera

Where's the Paris Hilton angle?

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