Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have detected a hard X-ray burst, a long-lived outburst and a number of strong and short radio pulses from an infant neutron star with a magnetic field some 70 quadrillion times stronger than that of Earth. Named Swift J1818.0-1607, the object emitted X-rays about 16,000 years ago, when it was about 240 years old.

Swift J1818.0-1607 resides in the constellation of Sagittarius, about 16,000 light-years away.

It has a magnetic field up to 1,000 times stronger than a typical neutron star and belongs to a special class of objects called magnetars.

At about 240 years old, Swift J1818.0-1607 is both the youngest neutron star and the youngest magnetar ever discovered.

It is also one of the fastest-spinning such objects known, whirling around once every 1.36 seconds — despite containing the mass of two solar masses within a stellar remnant measuring just 25 km across.

source sci-news.com