Using information from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, researchers have found the first gamma-ray eclipses from a particular kind of binary star system.

As per the NASA blog, a pulsar, or the superdense, quickly revolving remnants of a star that erupted in a supernova, is present in each of these so-called spider systems, steadily eroding its companion.

Seven spiders that experience these eclipses, which happen when the low-mass companion star crosses in front of the pulsar from our perspective, were discovered by an international team of researchers who combed through more than ten years of Fermi observations.

They were able to determine other details, such as the systems' tilt with respect to our line of sight, thanks to the data.

“One of the most important goals for studying spiders is to try to measure the masses of the pulsars,” said Colin Clark, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany, who led the work.

“Pulsars are basically balls of the densest matter we can measure. The maximum mass they can reach constrains the physics within these extreme environments, which can’t be replicated on Earth.”