Explosion of a Neutron Star in a Nearby Galaxy

On March 5th, 1979, a highly magnetic neutron star just outside of our Milky Way Galaxy erupted with a burst of gamma rays.   For minutes afterward, the star seemed to pulse as the star spun around, revealing and obscuring the fireball on its surface.   In my search for similar explosions within other galaxies, I found a kindred pulsation after a gamma-ray burst on January 10, 1997 (GRB 970110).   The most likely source is “The Fireworks Galaxy”, but I am still searching for additional satellite data that might better pinpoint the host galaxy. I presented a summary of my work at the Sixteenth Maryland Astrophysics Conference in 2005. 

Links

1. A write-up of my poster, “A Magnetar in the BATSE Catalog?” was published in the AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 836 and can also be found at the arxiv.org pre-print server.
   

2. Here's also an unpublished draft of my extragalactic magnetar research from 2005.

3. Most of my data came from the Compton Observatory Science Support Center.