Masters student Sorcha Kennelly of UCC will present a talk “Cosmic Spiders – a deadly binary dance”.  Starting with a history lesson and overview of neutron star physics, she will discuss spiders, the binary star systems with neutron stars that are challenging precisely how massive neutron stars can be.  She will delve into the interesting properties and behaviours of these cosmic cannibals to demonstrate what exactly it is we can learn from them.  We shall hear how they’re studied, and the outstanding questions in the field.

Main image:  a misshapen main sequence star in a binary system with a millisecond pulsar, accreting mass from the main sequence companion (credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Centre).   Small image: Sorcha Kennelly.