The newborn magnetar, a specific kind of neutron star, actually enhances the brightness of a supernova.

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 ...

Superluminous supernovas are the brightest stellar explosions in the universe. Astronomers may have found a mechanism that can trigger these events.

The findings confirm a theory first proposed 16 years ago by University of California, Berkeley theoretical astrophysicist Dan Kasen. Kasen and his colleagues hypothesized that at least some ...

An artist's impression of a magnetar with a wobbly accretion disk. (Joseph Farah and Curtis McCully) A never-before-seen 'chirp' in the light of an exploding star has revealed new clues about the ...

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 say the "powerful engine" behind superluminous exploding stars had been hidden for years — until a "chirp" from the cosmos helped confirm their link.

For many years, astronomers have relied on distant supernovae as cosmic beacons to study the universe and test the laws of physics. But while ...

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, ...

Researchers found a magnetic star core acting as a high speed engine to power a record breaking luminous supernova.

A cosmic mystery surrounding the universe's most dazzling explosions, superluminous supernovas, appears to have been solved by scientists studying a colossal stellar event a billion light-years from ...