WASHINGTON—Astronomers have observed the most massive known example of an object called a neutron star, one classified as a “black widow” that got particularly hefty by gobbling up most of the mass of a stellar companion trapped in an unhappy cosmic marriage.
The researchers said the neutron star, wildly spinning at 707 times per second, has a mass about 2.35 times greater than that of our sun, putting it perhaps at the maximum possible mass for such objects before they would collapse to form a black hole.
A neutron star is the compact collapsed core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova at the end of its life cycle. The one described by the researchers is a highly magnetized type of neutron star called a pulsar that unleashes beams of electromagnetic radiation from its poles. As it spins, these beams appear from the perspective of an observer on Earth to pulse—akin to a lighthouse’s rotating light….