Flying through the young star cluster Westerlund 1 (artist's impression)

In this video we fly through the young star cluster Westerlund 1 and close in on the strange magnetar that lies within it. This remarkable cluster contains hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost one million suns. European astronomers have for the first time demonstrated that the magnetar — an unusual type of neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field — was formed from a star with at least 40 times as much mass as the Sun.