Ultra-long-period Magnetar

Recently, astronomers with Curtin University note of International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research came across an object, called “Ultra-long-period Magnetar”.

Highlights

• The object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during their observations.
• It was kind of spooky for astronomers, because there’s nothing known in the sky doing so.
• It is located at about 4,000 light-years away, in the Galactic backyard.
• The discovered object is incredibly bright and smaller than the Sun. It was emitting highly-polarized radio waves, which suggests that object had an extremely strong magnetic field.
• It is a type of slow spinning neutron star, predicted to exist theoretically.

Transients

Objects turning on and off in the Universe aren’t new to astronomers. Astronomers call such objects as “transients”. There are two kinds of transients:

1. Slow transients– For instance, supernovae. They appear over a few days and disappear after a few months.
2. Fast transients– Fast transients are like a type of neutron star called pulsar. They flash on and off within seconds or even milliseconds.

What is magnetar?

Magnetar is a type of neutron star, having an extremely powerful magnetic field. Magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, specifically gamma rays and X-rays. The theory on these objects was proposed in 1992 by Christopher Thompson and Robert Duncan. The theory was later developed by Bohdan Paczynski. The theory explained a burst of gamma rays from Large Magellanic Cloud. A fast radio burst (FRB) was detected from a magnetar in 2020.