UVa Astronomy graduate student Thankful Cromartie led a paper published in Nature Astronomy detailing the discovery of the most massive neutron star ever observed. This work was conducted along with her advisor Scott Ransom (of UVa and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory) and the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration. The team used pulsar timing — accounting for every rotation of dense, rapidly rotating stellar remnants — to measure the mass of J0740+6620, a 2.89-ms pulsar with a binary white dwarf companion.