An artist’s impression of what the item may appear like if it’s a magnetar. Magnetars are exceptionally magnetic neutron stars, a few of which often produce radio emission. Known magnetars turn every couple of seconds, however in theory, “ultra-long period magnetars” might turn a lot more gradually. Credit: ICRAR
A group mapping radio waves in the Universe has actually found something uncommon that launches a huge burst of energy 3 times an hour, and it differs from anything astronomers have actually seen prior to.
The group who found it believe it might be a neutron star or a white dwarf— collapsed cores of stars– with an ultra-powerful electromagnetic field.
Spinning around in area, the unusual item sends a beam of radiation that crosses our line of vision, and for a minute in every twenty, is among the brightest radio sources in the sky.
AstrophysicistDr Natasha Hurley-Walker, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, led the group that made the discovery.
“This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations,” she stated.
“That was totally unforeseen. It was type of scary for an astronomer due to the fact that there’s absolutely nothing understood in the sky that does that.
“And it’s really quite close to us—about 4000 lightyears away. It’s in our galactic backyard.”
This image reveals the Milky Way as seen fromEarth The star icon reveals the position of the strange duplicating short-term. Credit:Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR/Curtin)
The item was found by Curtin University Honours trainee Tyrone O’Doherty utilizing the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in wilderness Western Australia and a brand-new strategy he established.
“It’s exciting that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a peculiar object,” statedMr O’Doherty, who is now studying for a PhD at Curtin.
“The MWA’s wide field of view and extreme sensitivity are perfect for surveying the entire sky and detecting the unexpected.”
Objects that switch on and off in the Universe aren’t brand-new to astronomers– they call them ‘transients’.
ICRAR-Curtin astrophysicist and co-authorDr Gemma Anderson stated that “when studying transients, you’re watching the death of a massive star or the activity of the remnants it leaves behind.”
‘Slow transients’– like supernovae– may appear throughout a couple of days and vanish after a couple of months.
‘Fast transients’– like a kind of neutron star called a pulsar— flash on and off within milliseconds or seconds.
ButDr Anderson stated finding something that switched on for a minute was actually strange.
She stated the strange item was exceptionally brilliant and smaller sized than the Sun, producing highly-polarised radio waves– recommending the item had an incredibly strong electromagnetic field.
Tile 107, or “the Outlier” as it is understood, is among 256 tiles of the MWA situated 1.5 km from the core of the telescope. The MWA is a precursor instrument to the SKA. Credit: Pete Wheeler, ICRAR
Dr Hurley-Walker stated the observations match an anticipated astrophysical item called an ‘ultra-long period magnetar’.
“It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically,” she stated.
“But no one anticipated to straight identify one like this due to the fact that we didn’t anticipate them to be so brilliant.
“Somehow it’s converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we’ve seen before.”
Dr Hurley-Walker is now keeping an eye on the item with the MWA to see if it changes back on.
“If it does, there are telescopes across the Southern Hemisphere and even in orbit that can point straight to it,” she stated.
Dr Hurley-Walker prepares to look for more of these uncommon things in the large archives of the MWA.
“More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we’d never noticed before,” she stated.
MWA Director Professor Steven Tingay stated the telescope is a precursor instrument for the Square Kilometer Array– an international effort to construct the world’s biggest radio telescopes in Western Australia and South Africa.
“Key to finding this object, and studying its detailed properties, is the fact that we have been able to collect and store all the data the MWA produces for almost the last decade at the Pawsey Research Supercomputing Centre. Being able to look back through such a massive dataset when you find an object is pretty unique in astronomy,” he stated.
“There are, no doubt, many more gems to be discovered by the MWA and the SKA in coming years.”
Reference: “A radio transient with unusually slow periodic emission” 26 January 2022, Nature
DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-021-04272- x
The Murchison Widefield Array lies on the Murchison Radio- astronomy Observatory in WesternAustralia The observatory is handled by CSIRO, Australia’s nationwide science firm, and was developed with the assistance of the Australian and Western AustralianGovernments We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji as the conventional owners of the observatory website.
The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth– a Tier 1 openly financed nationwide supercomputing center– assisted shop and procedure the MWA observations utilized in this research study.
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) belongs to the MWA. China’s SKA Regional Centre Prototype, moneyed by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is hosted by SHAO and added to processing the MWA observations utilized in this research study.
