So in 1986 it came as a great surprise when the Lovell Telescope discovered a millisecond pulsar in a cluster known as Messier 28. Over a period of years the positions of the nearer pulsars are seen to be changing as they move across the sky. Astronomers were very surprised to find that about half of all new-born pulsars are moving so fast that they will escape the gravitational pull of our Galaxy and be lost in the darkness of intergalactic space. A not so new star On 19 February 1992 a bright, new star appeared in the constellation of Cygnus. Although called a nova, it was not really a new star at all, but a very faint star which had suddenly flared up, increasing its brightness by many thousands of times.
Astronomers now believe that a nova consists of two stars in tight orbits around each other.
The stars are so close together that gas from the normal star spills over and falls towards the dwarf, forming a swirling disk of material around it. If this disk becomes unstable, large amounts of gas can suddenly drop on to the white dwarf causing a thermonuclear explosion that we see as a nova. Novae are completely unpredictable and astronomers have to seize the opportunity to observe them when they can. High-resolution observations showed that the gas cloud was not round but elongated. This may show the orientation of the binary system.