Astronomers believe a well-known object is actually a new type of star — and it's one that could be the "missing link" in models showing the formation of stellar corpses with extremely powerful magnetic fields, known as magnetars.
The team found that HD 45166, a star in a binary system that's been studied for over 100 years and sits around 3,000 light-years from Earth, is a highly magnetic helium star. This is a type of stellar body that hadn't previously been predicted to exist.
