Scientists have discovered new objects with ultra-strong magnetic fields through the SKA Pilot Telescope

IT House February 7 news, according to the Shanghai Observatory news, recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Astronomical Observatory assistant researcher Zhang Xiang and Australia Curtin University International Radio Astronomy Research Center (ICRAR-Curtin) researcher Hurley-Walker through the analysis of SKA pilot telescope observation data, found a radio transient source with unusually slow periodic radiation.

The study believes that the radio transient source may be an ultra-long-period magnetar or a white dwarf with a super-strong magnetic field. The results were published online in Nature on January 27.

By analyzing sky survey observations from the SKA Low-Frequency Pilot Telescope Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), the researchers found a dense transient source with unusually slow periodic radiation. This tentative appearance, which originated in early 2018, has an outbreak period of about 18 minutes, which is 9 times longer than the longest known pulsar burst period, each burst lasts about 30-60 seconds, and includes short timescales (

In the subsequent optical, infrared, and high-energy observations, the researchers did not find their counterparts. Dispersive measurements of its radio pulses indicate that the temporary source is located in the Milky Way, about 4200 light-years away from the Solar System. Polarization measurements show that the transient source has a linear polarization of approximately 90%, exceeding all known pulsars in the same observation mode in the 150 MHz band (no more than 70% of the pulsar lines observed in this mode due to the smoothing effect of the observation method), indicating that the transient source has an ultra-strong magnetic field. The long-period and high polarization of the low-frequency band of the temporary source cannot be explained by the theoretical model and observational characteristics of the known pulsar, so the researchers ruled out the possibility that it is an ordinary pulsar, and believes that the temporary source may be a magnetar or a white dwarf with a super-strong magnetic field.

The discovery is the first detection of long-period temporary sources in the galactic surface region, opening a new window for the search for low-frequency temporary sources, and more stars of this type may be found in the future, thus helping to understand the evolution and death of stars.

The research work is supported by the SKA Low Frequency Pilot Radio Telescope and the SKA Computing Cluster, which is tailored to the characteristics of the SKA data. IT Home learned that the prototype of the SKA Regional Center in China undertook the storage of part of the MWA data, participated in the processing of wideband polarization data, completed the analysis of the partially polarized image, and completed other data processing tasks together with the computing equipment of the Australian SKA Regional Center.