Astronomers have imaged a strange S-shaped jet emerging from a neutron star for the first time ever. The weird emission suggests this dead star resembles the shape of water spraying from a garden sprinkler.
The "cosmic garden sprinkler" in question is a neutron star that sits in the binary system Circinus X-1, located more than 30,000 light-years from Earth. It was born when a star at least eight times the size of the sun died in a supernova explosion, the light from which would have reached Earth almost 5,000 years ago around the time Stonehenge was being built.
