Radio astronomers discover 8 new millisecond pulsars A group of astronomers has discovered 8 millisecond pulsars located within the dense clusters of stars, known as “globular clusters'', using South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope. Millisecond pulsars are neutron stars, the most compact star known, that spin up to 700 times per second. This is the first pulsar discovery using the MeerKAT antennas and it comes from the synergic work of two international collaborations, TRAPUM and MeerTIME, with the findings detailed in a Millisecond pulsars are extremely compact stars mainly made up of neutrons, and are amongst the most extreme objects in the universe: they pack hundreds of thousands of times the mass of the Earth in a sphere with a diameter of about 24 km; and spin at a rate of hundreds of rotations per second. They emit a beam of radio waves that are detected by the observer at every rotation, like a lighthouse. The formation of these objects is highly enhanced in the star-rich environments at the centres of globular clusters.