The star, designated PSR J1914+1054g, is only the fourth known star of its kind: a radio pulsar hurling high through space, where astronomers have observed not only the pulsar but also what’s known as the bowshock nebula. the remnant of a supernova with which it was created. A team of scientists led by astrophysicist Sarah Eliza Mott of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Italy and the University of Oxford in Great Britain named the nebula Minnie Mouse.

The death of a major star is a rather brutal event. When they run out of fuel, the fusion that provides the external pressure to support the star against the internal gravitational pressure suddenly collapses and things get messy. The star rapidly expels its entrails and the core collapses under the influence of gravity into an ultradense neutron star 2.16 times the mass of the Sun, compressed into a sphere only 20 kilometers (12 mi) in diameter.

In most cases, these residual stars can be found within the nebula formed by their exploded remnants. But if the supernova explosion is one-sided, the uneven distribution of energy could collide with the neutron star in space at high speeds, scaling the galaxy.

But to create a nebula like the Mini Mouse requires a number of special conditions.

First, the neutron star must be a pulsar – so named because a fast-spinning pulsar “flickers” like a cosmic beacon as beams of radiation shoot out from its poles, guided and accelerated by strong magnetic fields. These magnetic fields also accelerate charged particles into a frenzied wind that swirls around the pulsar, sometimes interacting with the surrounding interstellar medium, forming a pulsar wind nebula.

However, if this pulsar gets a natural boost from a non-uniform supernova, a main shock occurs in the direction of travel and directs the blast pulsar like the tail of a comet. Known as the Pulsar Arc Nebula, this nebula can be seen as a halo of light.

Motta and colleagues used the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa to study the binary star GRS 1915+105. This binary star consists of a black hole and an ordinary star. They noticed something unusual about this binary star: A patch of light shining from their field of view was quite similar to a pulsar nebula called the Mouse, discovered in 1987. Exploration of data collected by the ongoing FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot (GPPS) survey has revealed a recently discovered pulsar with a rotation period of 138 milliseconds, which appears to lie in front of this band. Further observations by the team showed that J1914 was located exactly at the head of the nebula.

The MeerKAT radio data also showed a faint circular shape far behind the pulsar and its tail, and the orbit seemed to move directly towards the centre. The researchers identified it as the remnant of the supernova that gave birth to the J1914 pulsar.

The team found that the length of the tail is about 40 light-years, and the radius of the supernova remnant is about 43 light-years. They also determined that about 82,000 years have passed since the birth of the pulsar (aka supernova); extending to the center of the nebula, this propels J1914 to a supersonic speed of 320 to 360 kilometers per second (200 to 225 miles per second).

It doesn’t even come close to the fastest escaped star we’ve ever seen, and it’s not nearly enough to reach the speed of the Milky Way’s split, but it’s a pretty impressive clip. And as the researchers noted, only three more pulsars with the same characteristics have been identified.

The researchers said the discovery will help astronomers better understand pulsars and their winds, supernova explosions, the local interstellar environment, high-speed particles and wind shocks. It also demonstrates the potential of MeerKAT to detect these rare objects.