Latest Rotating radio transient Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Pulsars are one of the most baffling classes of astronomical objects. Originally discovered as flickering sources of radio waves, pulsars were soon interpreted as rapidly rotating and strongly magnetized neutron stars about the size of a small city. Because of the oppositely directed beams of radiation emitted from their magnetic poles, pulsars are like cosmic lighthouses. The star spins and the beams sweep past the Earth, displaying a...

XMM-Newton has detected periodic X-ray emission, or the pulsed heartbeat of a weird new type of star. Collecting the X-rays from the so-called rotating radio transient has confirmed the nature of the underlying celestial object and given astronomers a new insight into these exotic objects.The observations were made using XMM-Newton's European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC), which targeted the celestial object RRAT J1819"“1458. Astronomers observed the object for around 12 hours and detected...

Jodrell Bank -- Astronomers of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK) have led an international team which used the Parkes radio telescope in Australia to find a new kind of cosmic object which sends out radio flashes. These flashes are very short and very rare: one hundredth of a second long, the total time the objects are visible amounts to only about one tenth of a second per day. The discovery will be published in this week's issue of the journal Nature. Eleven...