A cosmic mystery: Astronomers find object flashing in both radio waves and X-rays

An image of deep space filled with white dots of stars and pink and purple clouds. In the lower right hand corner are two yellow bars indicating a bright object labeled ASKAP J1832.
This image of the sky shows the region around ASKAP J1832-0911, the mysterious newly discovered object. The image was generated utilizing 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. (Courtesy of Ziteng [Andy] Wang, ICRAR)

Astronomers from teams around the world – including UWM scientists – have made a startling discovery about a new type of cosmic phenomenon.

The mystery object emits pulses of radio waves and X-rays. It’s the first time an object in this recently discovered class has been detected in X-rays.

Astronomers hope the finding, published Wednesday in the science journal Nature, will provide insights into the sources of similar mysterious signals observed across the sky.

For UWM Professor David Kaplan and the research teams on the project, this particular object was unlike anything they’d seen before.

“The source turned out to be so, so bright – by a factor of 10 to 100 times brighter than most sources like this, even though it’s far away,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan and Akash Anumarlapudi, who just earned his PhD from UWM this month, are key members of the research team. They analyzed the data, did calculations, and contributed as authors. Kaplan jointly led the survey that discovered the object.

Astronomers from the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia, along with international teams, discovered the object, called ASKAP J1832-0911. They used the ASKAP radio telescope on Wajarri Country in Australia, part of Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO.

Astronomers 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.

Read the full story on UWM Report.

By Becky Lang, Marketing & Communications

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