New research suggests that the highly magnetized remnants of stars are responsible for powering some of the universe’s most brilliant supernova explosions ...

This violent fate is rare: fewer than about 1% of stars are big enough to end their lives this way. Indeed, these dramatic explosions only occur in so-called “massive stars”. These are stars with a ...

Astronomers have witnessed the birth of a rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron star or "magnetar" for the first time. The observation of this event, triggered by the death ...

A supernova - the explosion marking the end of a massive star's life - is one of the brightest cosmic events, usually about a billion times more luminous than the sun. But some - a small ​fraction - ...

The universe has a dark sense of humor. Five thousand light-years away, in the constellation Vela, a star is dying in the most cinematic way. It’s almost like it’s stripping its flesh, flinging its ...