NASA releases images of the 'bones' of a dead star, 16,000 light-years away

NASA released new images of the "bones" of a dead star in conjunction with a new study on the astronomic event Monday.

"Around 1,500 years ago, a giant star in our Galaxy ran out of nuclear fuel to burn. When this happened, the star collapsed onto itself," a NASA press release said.

The agency's newest telescope, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, looked at the pulsar wind for 17 days, the longest the telescope has looked at a single object since its launch.

The pulsar, formally known as PSR B1509-58, was first seen by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2001 and the pulsar wind was found to be 16,000 light-years from Earth.

Observations provide skeleton of dead star

The data from the observation gave scientists insights into the dynamics of matter around the dead star.

“The IXPE data gives us the first map of the magnetic field in the ‘hand’,” said the study's lead author Roger Romani of Stanford University. “The charged particles producing the X-rays travel along the magnetic field, determining the basic shape of the nebula, like the bones do in a person’s hand."

The telescope has found similar patterns in different pulsar winds, implying that these patterns may be common.