The deep and vast starry sky is full of too many scientific mysteries, and the pace of human exploration has never stopped. By analyzing the sky survey observation data of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) low-frequency pilot telescope, Chinese and foreign astronomers have found a new object with a super magnetic field in the Milky Way for the first time, about 4200 light-years away from the solar system.
On the 27th, the international authoritative journal Nature published the results of this study online.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is the world's largest integrated aperture radio telescope jointly built by more than a dozen countries around the world, named after the total area of "1 square kilometer", and officially started construction in July 2021. Before the SKA was built, several pilot telescopes were already in operation. Among them, the low-frequency pilot telescope "Murchison Widefield Array " ( MWA ) is located in Australia.
Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an Australian collaborator, Dr. Hurley-Walker of the International Radio Astronomy Research Center (ICRAR-Curtin) at Curtin University, and other Chinese and foreign researchers, through the analysis of MWA's sky survey observation data, unexpectedly found a new object with a super magnetic field in the Milky Way - a radio transient source with unusually slow periodic radiation.
On January 27, Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced the latest achievements at a press conference. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Jiansong
According to Zhang Xiang, this temporary appearance originated in early 2018, and its outbreak period is about 18 minutes, which is 9 times longer than the longest known pulsar burst period, and each outbreak lasts 30-60 seconds, including short-term time scales (>
This discovery is the first long-period temporary source detected by humans in the galactic surface region of the Milky Way, which opens a new window for the search for low-frequency temporary sources. "If more transient sources with similar characteristics can continue to be detected and their physical properties revealed, it means that there is a class of long-period stars with super magnetic fields in the Milky Way, which will help humanity fully understand the evolution and death of stars." Zhang Xiang said.
On January 27, the SKA research team of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences held the prototype control room of the SKA Regional Center. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Jiansong
The discovery of this new object with an ultra-strong magnetic field is due to the highly sensitive SKA low-frequency pilot telescope and the SKA computing cluster tailored to the characteristics of the SKA data. Zhang Xiang said: "The amount of raw data in this project is huge, and the amount of data generated by the data processing intermediate process is even greater, with more than 10 million image files, the processing process is extremely complex, and the requirements for data processing are extremely high." ”
With the discovery of this new object with a super magnetic field, a new generation of radio telescopes represented by the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and its pilot telescope is ushering in a new era of radio temporary source research with deeper and broader observation capabilities. At present, Chinese and foreign research teams are using the "Murchison Wide Field Array (MWA)" to carry out a systematic search to discover more stars of this type and build a large sample for statistical research, thereby filling the gap in magnetometric research.
Source: Xinhua Viewpoint