Washington -- NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope -- able to identify pulsars by gamma-ray emissions -- has provided data for two studies, U.S. officials said.
International teams of astronomers say they've analyzed gamma-rays from two dozen pulsars, including 16 discovered by Fermi.
A pulsar is the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left after a massive
star explodes, NASA said.
"Since the demise of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory a decade ago, we've wondered about the nature of unidentified gamma-ray sources it detected in our galaxy," said Paul Ray of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. "These studies from Fermi lift the veil on many of them."
