Repeating Fast Radio Burst

As UHF/uW enthusiasts this story from the radio astronomy community is interesting:  until this most recent work, only one repeating FRB, known as FRB 121102, had been observed. Every other FRB has flashed once and then disappeared. But now, using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) instrument, researchers have detected a second such repeating event. Excitingly, it bears striking similarities to the first repeating FRB.

“These are extremely powerful and frequent bursts. We have never seen anything like this before. The closest analogs we have in our own galaxies (pulsars) are more than a trillion times fainter,” Tendulkar said about the repeating FRB. Additionally, “this second source shows burst behavior (i.e. multiple structures in the burst) that is extremely similar to the first repeating FRB and which is different from all the single FRBs,” Tendulkar said.

The new repeating FRB has another unusual characteristic as well. While most other FRBs detected were recorded at between 1400 megahertz (MHz) and 2000 MHz, these bursts were found at 400-800 MHz, far lower than ever before.

“Now we know that FRBs are detectable at 400 MHz, and should be detectable at even lower frequencies,” Tendulkar said. 400 Mhz is the lower limit of the CHIME experiment at the moment, so other FRBs at lower frequencies could simply be going undetected.

This posting is taken from http://astronomy.com/news/2019/01/repeating-fast-radio-burst-detected-for-second-time-in-history on Thursday, January 10 2019

                                        
                                                       Canada's Chime telescope