An artists impression of what the things may look like if its a magnetar. Magnetars are extremely magnetic neutron stars, some of which sometimes produce radio emission. Understood magnetars turn every few seconds, but theoretically, “ultra-long duration magnetars” might turn much more slowly. Tile 107, or “the Outlier” as it is understood, is one of 256 tiles of the MWA situated 1.5 km from the core of the telescope. The MWA is a precursor instrument to the SKA.
An artists impression of what the item might look like if its a magnetar. Understood magnetars rotate every couple of seconds, but in theory, “ultra-long period magnetars” might turn much more gradually.
A group mapping radio waves in the Universe has found something unusual that launches a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and its unlike anything astronomers have actually seen prior to.
The group who discovered it believe it might be a neutron star or a white dwarf– collapsed cores of stars– with an ultra-powerful magnetic field.
Spinning around in space, the strange object sends out a beam of radiation that crosses our line of sight, and for a minute in every twenty, is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.
Astrophysicist Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, led the team that made the discovery.
” This item was appearing and vanishing over a few hours throughout our observations,” she said.
” That was completely unforeseen. Because theres absolutely nothing understood in the sky that does that, it was kind of scary for an astronomer.
” And its really rather near to us– about 4000 lightyears away. Its in our stellar backyard.”
This image reveals the Milky Way as seen from Earth. The star icon reveals the position of the strange repeating short-term. Credit: Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR/Curtin).
The object was found by Curtin University Honours student Tyrone ODoherty utilizing the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in wilderness Western Australia and a new strategy he established.
” Its interesting that the source I identified in 2015 has turned out to be such a peculiar object,” stated Mr. ODoherty, who is now studying for a PhD at Curtin.
” The MWAs broad field of vision and severe level of sensitivity are perfect for surveying the whole sky and finding the unforeseen.”.
Things that switch on and off in the Universe arent brand-new to astronomers– they call them transients.
ICRAR-Curtin astrophysicist and co-author Dr. Gemma Anderson said that “when studying transients, youre watching the death of a huge star or the activity of the residues it leaves behind.”.
Slow transients– like supernovae– might appear over the course of a few days and vanish after a couple of months.
Fast transients– like a kind of neutron star called a pulsar– flash on and off within seconds or milliseconds.
Dr. Anderson said finding something that turned on for a minute was really unusual.
She said the strange object was exceptionally bright and smaller than the Sun, emitting highly-polarised radio waves– recommending the object had a very strong magnetic field.
Tile 107, or “the Outlier” as it is known, is one of 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 said the observations match a predicted astrophysical object called an ultra-long duration magnetar.
” Its a kind of gradually spinning neutron star that has been anticipated to exist theoretically,” she said.
” But no one expected to directly spot one like this due to the fact that we didnt anticipate them to be so intense.
” Somehow its transforming magnetic energy to radio waves far more successfully than anything weve 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 throughout 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 items in the huge archives of the MWA.
” More detections will tell astronomers whether this was an unusual one-off occasion or a vast brand-new population we d never seen previously,” she said.
MWA Director Professor Steven Tingay said the telescope is a precursor instrument for the Square Kilometer Array– an international effort to construct the worlds biggest radio telescopes in Western Australia and South Africa.
” Key to finding this object, and studying its comprehensive homes, is the reality that we have been able to keep and gather all the data the MWA produces for nearly the last decade at the Pawsey Research Supercomputing Centre. Being able to recall through such a huge dataset when you discover a things is pretty special in astronomy,” he said.
” There are, no doubt, a lot more gems to be discovered by the MWA and the SKA in coming years.”.
Referral: “A radio short-term with uncommonly slow routine emission” 26 January 2022, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-021-04272-x.
The Murchison Widefield Array is located on the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia. The observatory is handled by CSIRO, Australias nationwide science company, and was developed with the support of the Australian and Western Australian Governments. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji as the standard 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.
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) is a member of the MWA. Chinas SKA Regional Centre Prototype, funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is hosted by SHAO and contributed to processing the MWA observations used in this research.