Magnetar discovered near supernova remnant Kesteven 79

(Photo Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/Ping Zhou/Nanjing University)

The European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray telescope has detected two very different neutron stars in the leftover remnants from a supernova explosion located about 23,000 light-years away. The telescope even discovered that one of the neutron stars, the smaller blue object in this lower half of this image, is actually a magnetar: a neutron star boasting an extremely strong magnetic field.