• Question: have you ever witnessed an actual neutron star explosion?

    Asked by edwardg to Alice on 14 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Alice Harpole

      Alice Harpole answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      Not personally! The explosions that I study emit radiation in the X-ray part of the spectrum, so it would not be possible to observe this with the naked eye. There are/have been several space-based X-ray telescopes, e.g. RXTE, Swift and NuSTAR which have made many observations of these explosions (and continue to do so).

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