The stars in the night sky may seem like they have been there forever, but each star was created from gas and dust in space pulled together by gravity. A newly born star burns brightly until it runs out of fuel. Small- and medium-size stars like our own Sun end their lives as white dwarf stars, the glowing remains of the star's core. Stars much bigger than our Sun die a spectacular death, exploding as supernovae. The remains of a supernova explosion is a dense, dark core, either a neutron star or a black hole. The idea of a neutron star was first presented over 80 years ago, in 1934, but it was another 33 years before astronomers found a neutron star. In 1967, X-rays were detected from a distant neutron star and later the same year, the first radio pulsar was discovered. A pulsar is a highly magnetized neutron star that is spinning, sending a beam of radio pulse toward the Earth with each spin. Radio telescopes here on Earth can watch these pulses, which arrive like a steady ticking clock.

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