The system is an example of “plasma lensing,” in which gravitational lensing occurs in an area filled with plasma (in this case, the gas trailing the brown dwarf). This plasma lensing has magnified some of the pulsar’s radio emission by a factor of 70 to 80, massively boosting astronomers’ ability to observe these small, close-in regions. B1957+20 and its brown dwarf companion orbit each other every 9.2 hours, making it relatively easy to observe multiple lensing events every time the plasma trail and the pulsar line up from our point of view, so the team could build up a clear picture of the system.Not only does this work offer a close-up look at an extremely interesting system, it also may shed light on one of astronomy’s hottest topics: fast radio bursts (FRBs). “Many observed properties of FRBs could be explained if they are being amplified by plasma lenses,” said Main. “The properties of the amplified pulses we detected in our study show a remarkable similarity to the bursts from the repeating FRB [121102] , suggesting that the repeating FRB may be lensed by plasma in its host galaxy.”Future plans to follow up this discovery, which was made with data from the Arecibo Observatory, are planned to better characterize the system.