NASA’s Kepler, Swift Missions Harvest ‘Pumpkin’ Stars

Astronomers using observations from NASA’s Kepler and Swift missions have discovered a group of rapidly spinning stars that produce X-rays at more than 100 times the peak levels ever seen from the sun. The stars, which spin so fast they’ve been squashed into pumpkin-like shapes, are thought to be the result of close binary systems where two sun-like stars merge. The 18 stars rotate in just a few days, on average, compared to the sun’s nearly one month rotation. Their rapid rotation greatly amplifies the sa