Geminga is a gamma ray and x-ray pulsar source thought to be a neutron star approximately 250 parsecs (around 800 light-years) from the Sun in the constellation Gemini. Its name, attributed by its discoverer Giovanni Bignami, is both a contraction of Gemini gamma-ray source, and a transcription of the words ghè minga (), meaning "it's not there" in the Milanese dialect of Lombard. The name was approved by the International Astronomic Union on 4 April 2022. Pulsar The nature of Geminga was quite unknown for 20 years after its discovery by NASA's Second Small Astronomy Satellite (SAS-2). Finally, in March 1991 the ROSAT satellite detected a periodicity of 0.237 seconds in soft x-ray emission. Thus, it is supposed that Geminga is a sort of neutron star: the decaying core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova about 300,000 years ago. It was once thought that this nearby explosion was responsible for the low density of the interstellar medium in the immediate vicinity of the Solar System. This low-density area is known as the Local Bubble. Possible evidence for this includes findings by the Arecibo Observatory that local micrometre-sized interstellar meteor particles appear to originate from its direction. More recently, however, it has been suggested that multiple supernovae in subgroup B1 of the Pleiades moving group were more likely responsible, becoming a remnant supershell. A study from 2019, using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered a large gamma-ray halo around Geminga. Accelerated electrons and positrons collide with nearby starlight. The collision boosts the light up to much higher energies. Geminga alone could be responsible for as much as 20% of the high-energy positrons seen by the AMS-02 experiment. Previous studies using data from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-ray Observatory found only a small gamma-ray halo around Geminga at higher energies. Discovery and identification Geminga was the first example of an unidentified gamma-ray source, a source which could not be associated with any objects known at other wavelengths. It was first detected as a significant excess of gamma rays over the expected background of diffuse Galactic emission, by the SAS-2 satellite (Fichtel et al. 1975) and subsequently by the COS-B satellite. The SAS-2 group reported a pulsation in the gamma-ray signal, with period approximately 59 s, although the limited number of detected gamma rays (121 over a period of four months) led them to conclude that the pulsation