A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature reveals the discovery of a pulsating, dead star radiating with energy comparable to roughly 10 million suns, making it the brightest pulsar ever recorded.

Astronomers discovered the pulsar – a leftover remnant from a supernova explosion – in the galaxy Messier 82 (M82) using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR).

“You might think of this pulsar as the ‘Mighty Mouse’ of stellar remnants,” said Fiona Harrison, the NuSTAR principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology, in a recent statement. “It has all the power of a black hole, but with much less mass.”

According to NASA, the discovery is helping astronomers understand ultraluminoux X-ray sources (ULXs), which were all thought to be black holes until now. New data from NuSTAR, however, confirms that one ULX on M82 is actually a pulsar.

“The pulsar appears to be eating the equivalent of a black hole diet,” said Harrison. “This result will help us understand how black holes gorge and grow so quickly, which is an important event in the formation of galaxies and structures in the universe.”

CNET reports that although pulsars are similar to black holes by their ability to possess great gravitational fields, it is also generally believed that pulsars are weaker, contain significantly less mass, and emit light instead of consume it. This newly discovered pulsar, however, is as strong as a black hole despite its smaller size and pulses at a rate of 1.37 seconds.

“In the news recently, we have seen that another source of unusually bright X-rays in the M82 galaxy seems to be a medium-sized black hole,” said astronomer Jeanette Gladstone of the University of Alberta, Canada, who is not part of the study. “Now, we find that the second source of bright X-rays in M82 isn’t a black hole at all. This is going to challenge theorists and pave the way for a new understanding of the diversity of these fascinating objects.”