Astronomers say they have traced a mysterious pulsing in the Milky Way to a surprising source: a dead star locked in a dance with another star.

Astronomers have figured out where a stream of long radio bursts is coming from, and its origin is unprecedented. Rather than coming from the typical neutron star—the core of a star that has exploded and can no longer undergo nuclear fusion—the pulses are emitted by a pair of stars locked in a cosmic dance with one another.

An international team of astronomers led by scientists from the Netherlands has shown that a white dwarf and a red dwarf orbiting each other every two hours are emitting radio pulses. Thanks to observations with several telescopes,