Astronomers have discovered a strange object in our galaxy that flashes every 44 minutes—and it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Named ASKAP J1832-0911, this mysterious object gives off bursts of both radio waves and X-rays, making it a rare and puzzling find in the night sky.
The object was discovered by an international team of scientists led by researchers from the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia.
They first spotted ASKAP J1832-0911 using the ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia, which can scan large areas of the sky.
In a lucky coincidence, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory happened to be looking at the same area of the sky at the same time. This allowed the team to detect the object flashing in both radio and X-ray signals.
This is the first time astronomers have seen a long-period transient (LPT) emitting X-rays. LPTs are a new class of cosmic phenomena that send out signals every few minutes or even hours, instead of the faster bursts seen from most known objects in space.
Scientists don’t yet know exactly what causes them or why they pulse at such slow and regular intervals.
Lead researcher Dr. Ziteng (Andy) Wang from Curtin University says that detecting X-rays from this object was like “finding a needle in a haystack” because X-ray telescopes like Chandra only look at a small patch of sky at a time, compared to ASKAP’s wide view.
So far, only about ten LPTs have been discovered, and none of them had been seen in X-rays—until now.
This new detection adds a crucial piece to the puzzle. X-rays are more energetic than radio waves, so any explanation must now account for how one object can emit both kinds of signals.
Scientists have a few ideas. One possibility is that ASKAP J1832-0911 is a magnetar, which is a type of dead star with a super-strong magnetic field.
Another idea is that it could be a binary system—a pair of stars orbiting each other—where one is a magnetized white dwarf. But even these theories don’t fully explain what’s going on.
Located about 15,000 light-years from Earth, ASKAP J1832-0911 may lead to major discoveries in astrophysics.
And since finding one such object suggests there could be many more, researchers are hopeful that future studies will uncover even more of these cosmic oddballs.
