Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a source of mysterious radio waves that they could not identify for a long time. It turned out to be the fifth star-forming galaxy located near the recently discovered other four galaxies.
The new galaxy contains about 20 billion solar masses in stars, the average age of which is relatively young – about five billion years. Inside it is an array of warm dust and no signs of radiation from the black hole’s supermassive core.
The team used the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder telescope to locate the galaxy and calculate the distance of its location: about 1.5 billion light years. Its optical spectrum was also measured using the Binospec instrument.
Fast radio bursts are bright pulses of radiation on radio waves. They are observed mainly at wavelengths of tens of centimeters. The physical mechanism of radio waves is still unclear. Bursts last from hundredths of a millisecond to several milliseconds. Most bursts are not repeated, which complicates their observation.
But sometimes scientists manage to fix and determine their source. As a rule, their sources are galaxies with weak star formation.
