Since neutron stars began their existence as stars, they are found scattered throughout the galaxy in the same places where we find stars. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab) If that beam sweeps over Earth, we see it as a regular pulse of light.
As the neutron star spins, the magnetic field spins with it, sweeping that beam through space. This diagram of a pulsar shows the neutron star with a strong magnetic field (field lines shown in blue) and a beam of light along the magnetic axis.
One sugar cube of neutron star material would weigh about 1 trillion kilograms (or 1 billion tons) on Earth about as much as a mountain. These stellar remnants measure about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) across. This collapse leaves behind the most dense object known an object with the mass of a sun squished down to the size of a city. (Stars with higher masses will continue to collapse into stellar-mass black holes.) If the core of the collapsing star is between about 1 and 3 solar masses, these newly-created neutrons can stop the collapse, leaving behind a neutron star. The very central region of the star the core collapses, crushing together every proton and electron into a neutron. Neutron stars are formed when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) A neutron star is the densest object astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times Earth's mass into a sphere about 12 miles across, or similar in size to Manhattan Island, as shown in this illustration.
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