The cosmic oddity known as the Cow may have been a dying star that shed its skin like a snake before it exploded.
Newly released observations support the idea that the burst occurred in a dense environment with strong magnetic fields, astronomer Kuiyun Huang and colleagues report in The Astrophysical Journal Letters June 12.
These new measurements “for the mysterious transient … provide one of the strong hints of its nature,” says Huang, of the Chung Yuan Christian University in Taoyuan City, Taiwan.