Record holder in space

Neutron star spins 42,960 times per minute!

Artistic illustration: The neutron star (right) is part of a double system with the catalog name 4U 1820-30.(Bild: NASA)

An international team of astronomers has discovered one of the fastest spinning neutron stars in the universe. It rotates around its own axis at a speed of 716 times per second - that's an incredible 42,960 times per minute.

The rotational speed of this neutron star, which is part of a binary system with the catalog name 4U 1820-30, could be measured due to the presence of its close companion - a so-called white dwarf. This star, which is about the size of the Earth, orbits it with a period of just eleven minutes. This makes 4U 1820-30 the binary system with the shortest orbital period known to date.

Neutron star draws off a lot of material
Due to this proximity, the neutron star draws material from the white dwarf. Whenever enough of it accumulates on its surface, a huge nuclear explosion occurs. This makes the neutron star 100,000 times brighter than our sun and releases huge amounts of energy.

Energy that was registered and recorded by the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer X-ray telescope (NICER for short, see image below), which is attached to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS).

(Bild: NASA, Krone KREATIV)

26,000 light years away from Earth
The neutron star lies 26,000 light years away from Earth, roughly in the center of the Milky Way. Although it only has an estimated diameter of twelve to 16 kilometers, it has 1.4 times the mass of our sun.

Because the white dwarf orbits the neutron star so closely that it only needs 11.4 minutes for one orbit, the neutron star can extract a particularly large amount of helium from its larger but lighter partner.

Neutron stars are the extremely dense "corpses" of burnt-out suns. A teaspoon of their matter weighs around a billion tons. Their enormous mass causes them to attract and suck up everything that flies past in their vicinity.