PARIS (AFP) â A neutron star with a mighty magnetic field has thrown down the gauntlet to theories about stellar evolution and the birth of black holes, astronomers reported on Wednesday.
The magnetar lies in a cluster of stars known as Westerlund 1, located 16,000 light years away in the constellation of Ara, the Altar.
Westerlund 1, discovered in 1961 by a Swedish astronomer, is a favoured observation site in stellar physics.
It is one of the biggest cluster of superstars in the Milky Way, comprising hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost a million Suns and some two thousand times the Sun's diameter.
The cluster is also, by the standards of the Universe, very young. The stars were all born from a single event just three and a half to five million years ago.
Within Westerlund 1 is the remains of one of galaxy's few magnetars -- a particular kind of neutron star, formed from the explosion of a supernova, that can exert a magnetic field a million, billion times strong than Earth's.
Read More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100818/sc_afp/spaceastronomystars
The magnetar lies in a cluster of stars known as Westerlund 1, located 16,000 light years away in the constellation of Ara, the Altar.
Westerlund 1, discovered in 1961 by a Swedish astronomer, is a favoured observation site in stellar physics.
It is one of the biggest cluster of superstars in the Milky Way, comprising hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost a million Suns and some two thousand times the Sun's diameter.
The cluster is also, by the standards of the Universe, very young. The stars were all born from a single event just three and a half to five million years ago.
Within Westerlund 1 is the remains of one of galaxy's few magnetars -- a particular kind of neutron star, formed from the explosion of a supernova, that can exert a magnetic field a million, billion times strong than Earth's.
Read More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100818/sc_afp/spaceastronomystars
