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back to article 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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  1. Stuart Gray

    Correct English

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

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  2. 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?

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shame on you.

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

    Huh!

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  4. 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.

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  5. peter Silver badge

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

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

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  6. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    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!

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  7. 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).

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  8. A. Merkin

    Flashing, burnt-out star caught on camera

    Where's the Paris Hilton angle?

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