Everything you ever wanted to know about V1647 Ori and McNeil's Nebula

 

An artist's impression of what might be happening behind the thick dust disc surrounding the young Sun-like star V1647 Ori. X-ray observations by ESA's XMM-Newton, NASA's Chandra and Japan's Suzaku space observatories have probed the interior of the dust disc to find a rapidly-rotating star spinning with a period of one day. At 80 per cent the mass of our Sun and with a diameter approximately four times larger, spinning at this rate nears break-up speed for a star of this size. The data also suggest that matter is accreting onto the stellar surface in two pancake-shaped hotspots located on opposite sides of the star, in which the matter heats up and the high temperature plasma is confined. Copyright: ESA/C. Carreau

The fastest moving pulsar ever seen?

Researchers using three different telescopes – NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton in space, and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia – may have found the fastest moving pulsar ever seen.

Wide-field composite image of SNR MSH 11-61A and IGR J11014-6103. XMM-Newton data (purple) contains the supernova remnant. Credit (for this and the following images): X-ray: NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/J.Tomsick et al & ESA/XMM-Newton, Optical: DSS; IR: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF