July 26, 2022
A team including UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor of Astronomy Alex Filippenko has measured the mass of the heaviest neutron star to date.
A spinning neutron star periodically swings its radio (green) and gamma-ray (magenta) beams past Earth in this artist's concept of a black widow pulsar. The pulsar heats the facing side of its stellar partner to temperatures twice as hot as the sun's surface and slowly evaporates it. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)