All articles tagged with #radio astronomy
Astronomers spotted the fading radio afterglow of a gamma-ray burst that Earth never saw because its jet was not pointed toward us. Using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope, they traced ASKAP J005512-255834 to a distant, star-forming galaxy and identified it as the most convincing orphan-afterglow candidate yet, offering a template for finding similar high-energy explosions when the initial blast is missed.
Scientists released the LOFAR DR3 dataset—the largest radio sky survey to date—mapping about 13.7 million radio-emitting objects across 88% of the northern sky, drawn from 18.6 petabytes of data processed with Europe’s supercomputers; the survey reveals extreme phenomena like black-hole jets and distant active galaxies, and demonstrates the massive data-handling required to stitch signals from 70,000 antennas, setting the stage for future SKA projects and widespread follow-up studies.
SETI researchers warn that solar storms and plasma turbulence around stars can broaden and weaken ultra-narrow radio signals from potential alien transmitters, making them harder to detect with traditional searches and prompting researchers to rethink observation strategies, including higher-frequency surveys; the finding explains, in part, why technosignature signals remain elusive while suggesting aliens might still be out there.
Astronomers using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) detected the long‑lived radio afterglow of a powerful gamma‑ray burst that emitted little or no high‑energy light, revealing an orphan afterglow (ASKAP J005512-255834). The radio source brightened to about 10^32 watts of energy and faded over about 1,000 days, and lies in a distant, star‑forming galaxy ~1.7 billion light‑years away. This finding provides a clearer example of hidden GRB events and could help map the full gamma‑ray burst population, though an alternative explanation — a star torn apart by an intermediate‑mass black hole — remains possible.
Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope spotted an extremely bright hydroxyl maser in the distant galaxy merger H-ATLAS J142935.3–002836, whose signal was amplified by an unrelated foreground galaxy acting as a gravitational lens, yielding the first gigamaser—about 100,000 times the luminosity of a star—and enabling new ways to probe cosmic evolution from billions of light-years away.
Astronomers released LoTSS-DR3, the most detailed low-frequency radio sky map from the LOFAR network, cataloging 13.7 million cosmic sources and offering new insights into supermassive black holes, their jets, and galaxy clusters, while tackling ionospheric distortions with advanced data-processing techniques on ~18.6 petabytes of data.
Astronomers report a rare tidal disruption event AT2018hyz producing a narrow, ultra-fast jet from a supermassive black hole 665 million light-years away. The jet is now 50x brighter than when first detected, with total energy up to 5e55 ergs and a predicted peak around 2027, challenging typical TDE models with a long-lived jet. Future observations, including with the SKA, will help uncover more such events.
Astronomers monitoring the tidal disruption event AT2018hyz (Jetty McJetface) report its jet-driven radio emission has brightened ~50× since discovery and could peak in 2027, suggesting delayed outflows are more common in high-energy TDEs than previously thought.
A new study argues that the longest-lived long-period transient GPM J1839-10 is a white-dwarf–M-dwarf binary whose rotating magnetic field drives radio beams, potentially linking long-period transients to white-dwarf pulsars and explaining the puzzling, repeating radio pulses.
Astronomers at ICRAR and partners have identified ASKAP J1832-0911 as a rare long-period transient that emits radio bursts every 44 minutes and, for the first time, X-rays observed by Chandra. This cross-wavelength detection from a source about 15,000 light-years away in the Milky Way provides crucial clues to the origin of LPTs and could point to new physics or revised stellar evolution models, with possible explanations including a magnetar or a magnetized white-dwarf binary. The discovery underscores the value of simultaneous radio and X-ray observations to find more such objects.
Masers are the microwave cousins of lasers that power cryogenic amplifiers for deep-space signals, provide precise timekeeping with hydrogen and cesium clocks, and appear in natural astrophysical sources; advances in new materials could enable room-temperature masers and even chip-scale devices for quantum computing, signaling a potential revival beyond their historical role.
Researchers propose a Moon–Earth radio telescope network that could reach sub‑microarcsecond resolution, enabling direct shadows of dozens of supermassive black holes. Six strong targets are identified (including M104 and NGC 1052); a 100‑meter lunar dish paired with Earth baselines could detect all 31 candidates, with far‑side sites offering radio‑quiet observations. The approach relies on visibility data rather than traditional images and remains a decades‑long pursuit, but could greatly advance tests of general relativity and black hole imaging beyond current capabilities.
South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope identified 49 previously unknown, gas-rich galaxies in under three hours by mapping neutral hydrogen, originally observing a single radio galaxy; the rapid census reveals how much of the nearby universe remains hidden and showcases the power of wide-field, data-driven surveys as groundwork for future SKA projects.
Astronomers released the most detailed low-frequency radio image of the Milky Way’s southern Galactic Plane, built from 141 nights of observations with the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia and processed with over a million CPU hours for the GLEAM-X survey. The map doubles previous resolution and sensitivity, catalogs about 98,000 radio sources, and reveals numerous supernova remnants and star-forming regions, along with insights into pulsars. It marks a milestone in low-frequency radio astronomy and lays groundwork for future SKA-Low observations.
Astronomers using Australia's ASKAP telescope discovered an unusual hourglass-shaped outflow extending nearly 160,000 light-years from the quiet galaxy ESO 130 G012, challenging assumptions that only violent starbursts or active black holes produce such structures, and suggesting that steady star formation may also drive large-scale galactic winds.