NASA Latest Discovery: the Brightest Dead Star

NASA announced a new discovery while looking at distant galaxies. The bright dead star is actual the brightest one ever discovered and NASA said that its energy is the equivalent of 10 million suns. The NASA latest discovery raises some more questions about the mysterious black holes. The NASA latest discovery was spotted using the NuStar Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope. NASA was actually observing the recently discovered supernova in the galaxy called Messier 82. This galaxy was nicknamed the “Cigar galaxy” and it’s 12 million lightyears away from our planet.

The NuStar telescope picked up bright X-rays form a source of ultraluminous X-rays called M82 X-2. These bright sources of X-rays are called ULX and NASA said they are medium-sized black holes. The ULX are the missing link smaller and gigantic black holes. Unlike black holes, the pulsars pulse and the NuStar telescope picked up a pulse rate of 1,37 seconds coming from the M82 X2.

The NASA latest discovery has the energy of 10 million suns, which means it’s 10 times more than other pulsars discovered so far. What’s a pulsar you ask? They are neutron stars, the stellar remnants which were formed after the explosion of a star, called a supernova. The neutron stars are way smaller than young new stars but they are very dense. The NASA latest discovery, the M82 X2 is as big as the sun, in terms of mass.

Fiona Harrison from the California Institute of Technology named the NASA latest discovery “Mighty Mouse” and said that “It has all the power of a black hole, but with much less mass.”

Astronomers believe that the light coming from the dead star is caused by the fact that the gravity of neutron stars feeds on the matter of the companion stars.

Harrison explained:

“The pulsar appears to be eating the equivalent of a black hole diet. This result will help us understand how black holes gorge and grow so quickly, which is an important event in the formation of galaxies and structures in the universe.”

The NASA latest discovery sheds new light on the some of the astronomers’ theories regarding black holes and dead stars and will further investigate it.

Bio
Latest Posts

Alan O’Leary

Alan is a happily-married, New York-based writer with over 5 years of experience in journalism. He mainly focuses on subjects such as international politics, arts culture, social media and national news.