Astronomers Make Most Precise Measurement Yet of Distant, Spinning Star (VIDEO)

Astronomers have used the galaxy's biggest telescope to make the most precise measurement yet of a distant, spinning star. The new measurement is about one million times more precise than the previous calculations.

The star in question is called a neutron star. These starts are particularly interesting to study because some of them, called pulsars, give off pulsed radio waves whose beams sweep across telescopes at regular intervals. The densely packed matter of these pulsars spin at incredible speeds.

"Compared to other objects in space, neutron stars are tiny-only tens of kilometers in diameter-so we need extremely high resolution to observe them and understand their physics," said Jean-Pierre Macquart, one of the researchers, in a news release. "More than 45 years since astronomers discovered pulsars, we still don't' understand the mechanism by which they emit radio wave pulses."

In order to learn a bit more about this spinning star, the researchers used the interstellar medium, the "empty" space between stars and galaxies that is made up of sparsely charged particles, as a giant lens to magnify and look closely at the radio wave emission of the neutron star.

"Our new method can take this technology to the next level and finally get to the bottom of some hotly debated theories about pulsar emission," said Ue-Li Pen, one of the researchers, in a news release. "What's more, this new technique also opens up the possibilities for precise distance measurements to pulsars that orbit a companion star and 'image' their extremely small orbits-which is ultimately a new and highly sensitive test of Einstein's theory of General Relativity."

The findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Want to learn more? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.