To put it in perspective, this pulsar is spinning more than 6 million times as rapidly as the Earth.
Pulsars get their name because their emissions appear to turn on and off, or pulse, very rapidly.
Astronomers believe the stars channel some of their energy into a beam of radiation and as the star spins the beam sweeps through space like a lighthouse beacon. By counting how rapidly the beam flashes at Earth, scientists can calculate a pulsar's rate of spin. When a star explodes as a supernova it leaves behind a lingering core perhaps no more than 15 miles across but packed with as much matter as in our sun. RXTE is a mission built and operated by Goddard to study the variability of celestial X-ray sources. The Goddard-Los Alamos team searched data from the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics to confirm their find.