The contest was called the 2000 Siemens-Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition. It is about 5,000 light years away from Earth out in space. The high school team got to use the data from Chandra because their science teacher had asked NASA for time to use it. The students gathered all the data they needed and figured out by themselves what it meant. They even lived together all summer near their school to finish their research.
Neutron stars send out strong beams of x-rays, and spin very fast.
Then they explode in a huge blast of energy. Their leftover center, often no more than 10 miles wide, is very, very dense and heavy. X-rays are a kind of light that is invisible to your eyes. It is the same kind of light we use to take pictures of bones. It is a Y-shaped group of great big white radio telescope dishes that cover several square miles of desert land out in Socorro, New Mexico.