Extreme object

PSR J1614-2230

PSR J1614-2230 is a pulsar 3 900 light-years away, weighing 1.91 Suns, turning 317 times a second.

A neutron star of nearly two Suns, weighed in 2010 by the delay its companion's gravity puts on its radio ticks, a mass that ruled out many ideas of what neutron stars are made of.

Key facts

Kind

Pulsar

Distance

3 900 light-years

Mass

1.91 Suns

Turns once every

3.15 milliseconds

See it from here

Too faint for the eye; a telescope, or a long photograph, shows it.

How the map draws it

Drawn as a ring at its measured distance; a black hole has no shape to draw and a pulsar is far too small — the kind of thing, not this exact one · its blink is drawn 1 000 times slower than it turns, so that an eye can follow it.