A pair of stars spiraling around each other. That’s the origin of a new source of repeating radio bursts we’ve detected, called ASKAP J1745.
In recent years, astronomers have been puzzling over mysterious bursts of radio signals, known as long-period transients because of how slowly they repeat. They were first discovered by chance with telescopes scanning large chunks of the sky.
To date, astronomers have only found a dozen of these weird sources, and we’re still trying to understand exactly what they are.
In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, we describe a first-of-its-kind detection — both radio and X-ray bursts repeating with each orbit.
ASKAP J1745 is exciting because we’ve figured out what it is, unlike 10 of the 12 known long-period transients. Even better, we were able to detect it with a bunch of different telescopes that observe all different kinds of light.
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