Astronomers have discovered that the birth of neutron stars with magnetic fields trillions of times stronger than Earth's magnetosphere is the "magic trick" behind superbright supernovas.

Astronomers have for the first time observed the birth of a magnetar, a highly magnetized, rapidly spinning neutron star, directly linked to some of the universe’s brightest exploding stars. This ...

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 ...

Researchers said this event, called GRB 230906A, is likely in a stream of gas located about 4.7 billion light-years from Earth.

Superluminous supernovas, or ultra-bright cosmic explosions, have puzzled scientists for years. Recent studies of a supernova a billion light-years away reveal that a magnetar, a dense neutron star, ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Caltech/K. Miller and R. Hurt (IPAC) Astronomers may have discovered the first example of ...

The light did not fade the way it was supposed to. After blazing into view about a billion light-years from Earth, the supernova known as SN 2024afav settled into something stranger. Its brightness ...

Most gamma-ray bursts—the brightest, most powerful explosions in the universe—are tracked back to the deaths of massive stars. But a new discovery suggests that such enormous explosions can come from ...

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers have traced a short-duration gamma-ray burst event called GRB 230906A to a faint dwarf galaxy embedded in a vast stream of ...

A fleet of NASA missions has likely uncovered a collision between two ultradense stars in a tiny galaxy buried in a huge stream of gas. Astronomers have never seen this type of explosive event in an ...

After detecting a strange combination of signals in the summer of 2025, astronomers believe they may have captured the first evidence of a unique phenomenon previously theorized, but never observed: a ...

(THE CONVERSATION) Billions of light years away in a remote part of the universe, two neutron stars – the ultradense remnants of dead stars – collided. The catastropic cosmic event sent light and ...