Paul Sutter from Space.com writes: I'll be honest: Magnetars freak me out. But to get to the "why," I have to explain the "what." Magnetars are a special kind of neutron star, and neutron stars are a special kind of dead star.
The supermassive black hole is 40 million times as massive as the sun and powers a quasar that existed 700 million years after the Big Bang.
The asteroid zoomed by Earth at a perfectly safe distance of around 1.8 million miles (2.9 kilometers).
Images show surprise changes to the spacecraft as it interacted with the atmosphere.
