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Nearly 130 million light-years away from Earth, two neutron stars merged. These crushed, leftover cores of massive stars orbited around each other hundreds of times a second in a tight swirling dance that produced ripples through space called gravitational waves. Eventually the two neutron stars spun fast enough and close enough to each break apart and then merge together releasing energy in a gamma-ray burst and a flash of light called a kilonova. On Earth detectors and telescopes in space and around the world, including NASA’s Swift, Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra telescopes, saw the light from the collision in August 2017. Combined with the groundbreaking detection of its gravitational waves by the National Science Foundation's Laser Inferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) and NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope, scientists have a comprehensive set of observations that will help them test conclusions about the merging of neutron stars. Watch the video to learn more. #interstellar #nasa #neutronstar
