Thanks to a quirk of astrophysics, astronomers were able to observe features just tens of kilometers apart near a spinning neutron star located 6,500 light-years away from Earth. This is like using a telescope in your backyard to see DNA strands on the moon. Scientists have studied the “black widow pulsar” for several decades, and it got its name because it’s thought that the pulsar, a small neutron star, is slowly killing its brown dwarf companion.