Magnetars are neutron stars that have super strong magnetic fields, about 100 trillion times as strong as the Earth’s magnetic field. These fields are so intense that the solid neutron star crust buckles and shifts under its influence. The resulting star quakes could repeatedly generate brief flashes of hard X-rays and soft gamma-rays - giving rise to the rare but mysterious “soft gamma repeaters” - because magnetars seem to be rotating too slowly to produce the observed energy output. The Hubble image of N49, a Type II supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud, contains a magnetar which is now recognized as a soft gamma-ray repeater.
