The Hubble Space Telescope has caught a rapidly spinning neutron star in the act of gobbling up its partner, say NASA scientists.

A so-called "black widow" star with a tightly orbiting stellar partner has been caught in act of consuming its companion by a NASA space telescope, scientists say.

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The fast-spinning pulsar, known as PSRJ1311-3430 (J1311 for short), is part of a unique class of pulsars named for dangerous redback and black widow spiders that devour their cosmic mates. In time, the pulsar is expected to completely absorb its smaller companion star, a celestial partner that may have caused its characteristic quick spin. You can see avideo animation of the pulsar's deadly embrace here.

"The essential feature of black widow and redback binaries are that they place a normal but very low-mass star in close proximity to a millisecond pulsar, which has disastrous consequences for the star," Roger Romani, a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology in California, said in a statement. [The Star Quiz: Test Your Stellar Smarts]

When a massive star explodes in a supernova, its leftover core can survive as a neutron star, an incredibly dense body that can pack the mass of the sun into a city-sized ball. Neutron stars that rotate a few thousand times per minute, sweeping a beam of radio, visible light, x-rays, and gamma rays like a light house are known aspulsars. Astronomers can detect the stream of emission when it points towards Earth in a brief pulse.

But some pulsars rotate at a dazzling speeds, turning on their axis at least once every ten milliseconds, or a few thousand times a minute. Known as millisecond pulsars, more than half of these fast-spinning stars have companions, while their slower cousins tend to appear in isolation. The high companion rates suggest to scientists that interactions with a second star can accelerate the spin of a normal pulsar.

In 2012, Romani was part of a team that used NASA'sFermi Gamma-ray Space Telescopeto characterize J1311 using only its gamma-ray emission. While Fermi frequently identifies gamma-ray sources, radio telescope follow-ups have been the key source of detection of the rapid pulsation that identifies the source as a millisecond pulsar, though slower pulsars are frequently identifiable by the telescope.

The gamma-ray detection is key because many of the sedate pulsars are quiet in the radio spectrum, where the millisecond pulsars are frequently identified, potentially allowing numerous radio-quiet millisecond pulsars to pass by unnoticed.

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Hubble spots 'black widow' pulsar devouring companion star