The BP Crucis system features a pulsar plunging through a dense stream of plasma flowing from a blue hypergiant star 40 times the mass of our Sun, causing its X-ray brightness to flare during each four-day passage.
As the pulsar moves through the plasma, its accretion disk breaks apart, reforms, and eventually spins in the opposite direction.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Laboratory | edited by Space.com's
