Astronomers from Nanjing University in China have analyzed the archival data from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), searching for new pulsars. As a result, they detected 19 such objects that were missed by previous studies. The findings were presented January 5 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation. They are usually identified in the form of short bursts of radio emission; however, some of them are also observed via optical, X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes.