Contact: Norbert Schartel
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European Space Agency

Magnetar Westerlund 1 Before and After the 'Cosmic Hiccup'

Caption: Located in a star cluster about 15,000 light-years away in the Ara constellation in the southern hemisphere, the magnetar goes by the unwieldy official name CXOU J164710.2-455216. These images were taken by the European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC), on board ESA's XMM-Newton satellite, using 0.3-12.0 keV photons. The left panel shows the image of the field before the burst. The magnetar is brighter in the right panel, taken after the burst. A seismic event was observed on this object on September 2005 while it was being heavily observed with several satellites, including ESA's X-ray satellite, XMM-Newton, and NASA's Swift X-ray and gamma-ray observatory. The event caused the surface of the dense star to crack and shine brightly from multiple sources.

Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/ California Institute of Technology, M.Muno

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