In 2010, the discovery of four stars with really bige masses in the star cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy at “only” 160,000 years light from the Milky Way, left scientists baffled. Now there’s an explanation for their existance.

A study carried out by an international team led by Hugues Sana of the University of Amsterdam inthe Netherlands has uncovered through the use of the VLT (Very Large Telescope), and other ESO’s (European Southern Observatory) telescopes that most of the O-type stars are part of binary systems. Even more, usually one of two star acts like a vampire sucking matter from its companion.

A group of researchers at the Max Planck Institutes for Gravitational Physics and Radio Astronomy, working with an international team, has discovered thanks to the Fermi Space Telescope a very special pulsar called J1838-0537. In fact, it emit only gamma rays and an anomaly in its rotation was detected.

Swift J1822.3-1606 is a peculiar neutron star because it features the typical X-ray emission of a magnetar but its magnetic field appears to be that of a pulsar. In recent months it’s been studied with space telescopes NASA’s RXTE (Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer) and Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton and Japanese Suzaku but also with ground-based telescopes Gran Canarias Telescope and Green Bank Telescope.

A team of astronomers used the UKIRT (United Kingdom Infrared Telescope) discovering four pairs of stars orbiting each other in less than 4 hours. The nearest couple has two red dwarfs of spectral class M4 orbiting each other in only 2.5 hours.