Astronomers spy on a powerful deep-space object unlike anything previously seen

Magnetars are extremely magnetic neutron stars, some of which sometimes produce radio emissions. Known magnetars rotate every few seconds, but, theoretically, "ultra-long-period magnetars" may rotate much slower.

A team led by astronomers in Australia has discovered a completely new kind of object in deep space that behaves in strange and mysterious ways never previously.

A 4,000 light years away, which is relatively close in our cosmic vicinity, was seen spinning around and regularly blasting out a massive burst of energy that lasts a minute. Even more odd, that bright beam of radiation was simulated like clockwork every 18 minutes.

"It was kind of spooky for an Astronome because there's no known in the sky that does it," says a statement.

The behavior of a pulsar or magnetar is similar to the behavior of a pulsar. That spins around as they emit energy that can be detected here on Earth. But pulsars pulse very quickly, usually every few seconds. An object that sends out longer bursts just a few times an hour has never been seen before.

With the help of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Hurley-Walker has led a team from the Curtin University branch.

The MWA is a radio observatory that can observe a wide swath of sky over a wide variety of frequencies.

"It's important to know that the source I identified last year has turned out to be such a strange object," said O'Doherty, who is currently researching his doctorate.

The galactic variation might be the collapsed core of a star with an ultra-powerful magnetic field, according to Hurley-Walker.

"It's a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist theoretically," she said. "But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn't expect them to be so bright. Somehow it's converting magnetic energy to radio waves much more effectively than anything we've seen before."

For the time being, the unusual object has stopped sending out pulses that we can see, but Hurley-Walker says she is continuing to monitor it with the Murchison Widefield Array telescope in case it starts up again.

"If it does, there are telescopes across the Southern Hemisphere and even in orbit that can point straight to it," she said.

Elle hopes to revisit MWA's archives to see if the object is just one of the members of a larger family that's gone unnoticed until now.

"More detections will instruct astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we'd never imagined before."