NASA’s Chandra Space X-ray Observatory has detected a cluster of pulsars, or “spiders,” that are swallowing up their satellite stars in the Omega Centauri globular cluster, Space.com reports.
The observations should help scientists better understand how rapidly rotating neutron stars, called “spiders,” consume their neighbors, destroying the surrounding stars with intense radiation.
The five spider pulsars in this cluster were found in the center of Omega Centauri, a huge grouping of about 10 million stars located 17,700 light-years from Earth. Initially, scientists discovered them using the Parkes and MeerKAT radio telescopes, which identified a cluster of 18 fast neutron stars or “millisecond pulsars.”
Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada identified a quintet of spider pulsars using radio telescope data shortly after realizing that 11 of the 18 were emitting X-rays. The team compared the radio data of the pulsars with Chandra’s X-ray observations of 26 spider pulsars in 12 other globular clusters.
