An image of the sky showing the region around ASKAP J1832-0911. X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, radio data from the South African MeerKAT radio telescope, and infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: Ziteng (Andy) Wang, ICRAR.
In a study published in Nature, a long period transient has been discovered to also emit matching x-ray pulses for the first time.
The long period radio transient, known as ASKAP J1832-0911, was discovered in CRACO data. CRACO is part of our ASKAP radio telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country and is the newest instrument in the ATNF. It scans through huge volumes of data in real time, processing 100 billion pixels per second to detect anomalies in our sky.
The team, led by ICRAR researchers, then went on a hunt through data from other telescopes to find a related signal. They correlated the radio signals with X-ray pulses detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was coincidentally observing the same part of the sky.
Lead researcher Dr Ziteng (Andy) Wang from the Curtin University node of ICRAR said that discovering that ASKAP J1832-0911 was emitting X-rays felt like finding a needle in a haystack.
“The ASKAP radio telescope has a wide field view of the night sky, while Chandra observes only a fraction of it. So, it was fortunate that Chandra observed the same area of the night sky at the same time.”
ICRAR/Curtin’s Dr Ziteng (Andy) Wang, pictured in front of CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. Credit: ICRAR
Long period radio transients emit radio pulses that occur minutes or hours apart, are a relatively recent discovery. Since their first detection by ICRAR researchers with the Murchison Widefield Array in 2022, ten have been discovered by astronomers across the world. Our ASKAP and CRACO remain key instruments for their detection.
ASKAP J1832-0911 emits pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes every 44 minutes.
Currently, there is no clear explanation for what causes these signals, or why they ‘switch on’ and ‘switch off’ at such long, regular and unusual intervals though theories include a magnetar or binary star system.
Read the story on the ICRAR website.
Submit a proposal for time on CRACO (via ASKAP). Submissions close 15 June.