Astronomers have for the first time seen the birth of a magnetar—a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star—and confirmed that it's the power source behind some of the brightest exploding stars in the ...

In December 2024, the ATLAS astronomical survey detected a distant flash of light. It was a supernova, the explosive death of a massive star, located far, far away, roughly a billion light-years away.

Astronomers have discovered a strange new signal coming from an exploding star — a “chirp” that speeds up over time, similar to the signals seen when black holes collide. The unusual pattern appeared ...

Artist’s conception of a magnetar surrounded by an accretion disk that is wobbling, or precessing, because of the effects of general relativity. Some models of magnetars suggest that high-speed jets ...