New Movie of a Neutron Star Looks Eerily Like the Phantom of the Opera

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5. Vela could pretty much be the model for Dragon's Egg

The "mask" is formed by two beams of X-rays illuminating the disc of gas around the star, aligned with the star's magnetic poles which aren't quite pointed in exactly opposite directions. The jets of matter are being ejected along the axis of spin, which is definitely precessing. The Earth's axis also precesses, taking about 24,000 years to complete a rotation; the ancient Greeks who first detected this called it the "great year." Robert Forward would probably be amused that Vela's great year is on approximately the same scale as our regular year. In fact, Vela rotates about twice as fast as the fictional Dragon's Egg, so Egg's precession rate would probably be a bit longer, even closer to our own regular year.