A rare, extremely luminous X-ray outburst has been observed in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is a close neighbor of our own Milky Way galaxy. The observations, made by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and other telescopes, were described by an international team of astronomers led Penn State scientists on the Swift team. The researchers attributed the outburst to one of the most luminous nova eruptions ever produced by a white dwarf binary star system.
Rare ultra-luminous nova spotted in the Small Magellanic Cloud
