Synchronized telescope dance puts limits on mysterious flashes in the sky

Two outback radio telescopes synchronised to observe the same point of sky have discovered more about one of the universe 's most mysterious events in new research published today.

The Curtin University-led Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescopes were searching the sky for fast radio bursts, which are exceptionally bright flashes of energy coming from deep space.

These extreme events last for only a millisecond but are so bright that many astronomers initially dismissed the first recorded fast radio burst as an observational error.

In research published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers describe how ASKAP detected several extremely bright fast radio bursts, but the MWA—which scans the sky at lower frequencies—did not see anything, even though it was pointed at the same area of sky at the same time.

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Credit: Pete Wheeler, ICRAR

This is an outlying tile of the MWA telescope, located about 1.5km from the core. The Moon lights the tile and the ancient landscape.

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Astronomers have detected the strongest-ever fast radio burst (FRB) signals with the highest signal-to-noise ratio ever recorded. The FRB signals were detected by the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in remote Australia on March 1, 9 and 11.

The FRB received on March 9, FRB 180309, has been termed as four times stronger signal compared to normal FRBs detected by astronomers. FRB source still remains a mystery for astronomers. The signals last for few milliseconds and arrive without any warning.

Each antenna points in a slightly different direction, giving maximum sky coverage Fast radio bursts are elusive signals that last just a few milliseconds, and are thought to originate billions of light-years away – but, scientists don’t yet know what causes them