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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Teens stumble on a new class of astronomical object

Students sifting through archived data find an X-ray flare too brief to belong to an ordinary star.
Flaring source in NGC 6540

Three relatively steady X-ray sources (white circles) were outshone by a mysterious body (yellow arrow) that erupted with a large and sudden burst of X-rays. Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton, A. De Carlo/INAF

Secondary-school students have discovered a source of X-rays in the sky that appears to be a new type of astronomical object.

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Nature 560, 413 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05959-4

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