Astronomers are flummoxed by a mysterious celestial object that appears to be releasing massive bursts of energy at regular 18 minute intervals.
A team, led by astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, had a closer look at the object after it was discovered by Curtin University student Tyrone O'Doherty, who used the Murchison Widefield Array telescope in outback Western Australia. . "That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that.""And it's really quite close to us," she added, "about 4,000 lightyears away. It's in our galactic backyard.". That's because it is releasing an astronomical amount of radiation across a huge breadth of the frequency spectrum, requiring huge amounts of energy to produce, the team found.
This object's unusual brightness led the researchers to believe they were looking at an object with an extremely strong magnetic field. In athis week, the team suggests it could be a "ultra-long-period magnetar."
And then it turns out it's just an echo from one of our many satellites or probes, lol. Not really, but who knows. 🤷♂️
Are we doing the rounds with yet another mystery pulsar 🙄