Tags: Star.
SGR J1550-5418 is a soft gamma repeater (SGR) the sixth[citation needed] to be discovered located in the constellation Norma.Long known as an X-ray source it was noticed to have become active on 23 October 2008 and then after a relatively quiescent interval became much more active on 22 January 2009.It has been observed by the Swift satellite and by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope launched in 2008 as well as in X-ray and radio emission.It has been observed to emit intense bursts of gamma rays at a rate of up to several per minute.At its estimated distance of 30000 light years (~10 kpc) the most intense flares equal the total energy emission of the Sun in ~20 years.The underlying object is believed to be a rotating neutron star of the type known as magnetars which have magnetic fields up to 1015 gauss about 1000 times that of more typical neutron star X-ray sources.