NASA's NICER Tracks a Magnetar's Hot Spots Millions of light years away

For the first time, NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) has observed the merging of multimillion-degree X-ray spots on the surface of a magnetar, a supermagnetized stellar core no larger than a city.

On Oct. 10, 2020, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory discovered just such an outburst from a new magnetar, called SGR 1830-0645 (SGR 1830 for short). It’s located in the constellation Scutum, and while its distance is not precisely known, astronomers estimate that the object lies about 13,000 light-years away

Credit: NASA