Washington: Astronomers have found evidence of a magnetar – magnetised neutron star – that spins much slower than the slowest of its kind known until now, which spin around once every 10 seconds. The magnetar 1E 1613 – at the centre of RCW 103, the remains of a supernova explosion located about 9,000 light years from Earth – rotates once every 24,000 seconds (6.67 hours), the researchers found, says IANS. “The source exhibits properties of a highly magnetised neutron star, or magnetar, yet its deduced spin period is thousands of times longer than any pulsar ever observed,” NASA said. On June 22, 2016, an instrument aboard NASA’s Swift telescope captured the release of a short burst of X-rays from 1E 1613.
