Astronomers Find Mysterious Signals From Langka Stars

Illustration of white dwarf pulsars (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA A few years ago, radio telescopes in the Western Australian desert discovered a very strange signal. This radio signal is very bright and flickering like a pulsar with a distance of 4,000 light years from Earth.

This pulsar flickered in a very long period according to astronomers' observations, but the source was difficult to find. After finding the second and third radio signals, astronomers were finally able to determine where the source of the signal was.

The second radio signal is at a distance of 15,000 light years, while the third signal is about 5,000 light years. Compared to the first and second findings, the third findings are considered to have the longest period with a flash of light between 30 and 60 seconds every 2.9 hours.

After its narrow observation, citing from the Sciencealert report, something emitting in space comes from a small red dwarf star in a binary orbit that has a smaller size white dwarf star.

Natasha personal-Walker, Astrophysicist from kalin University, said she and her partner needed an optical image to find a source of the signal. This search is difficult to do because there are many stars blocking it.

"Long-period transactions are very interesting, and for astronomers to understand, we need an optical image," said Natasha. "Our new discovery lies far from the Galactic Field ... and we now believe that one stellar system, in particular, produces radio waves."

Natasha and her colleagues suspect that this radio signal comes from a binary with a type-M red dwarf adjacent to another object, namely a white dwarf which is the remains of the solar core. This object has a mass up to 1.4 times that of the Sun.

"Our data shows that the object is in a binary with another object, most likely a white dwarf, a stellar core from a dying star. Together, both produce radio emissions," said Natasha.

According to the calculation, this binary system consists of red dwarf stars with a mass of about 0.32 times the mass of the Sun and white dwarfs with a mass of 0.8 times the mass of the Sun. Although the light cannot be seen, this radio wave can be brighter when hitting the red dwarf.

The team still needs to observe whether these radio waves also come from white dwarfs. If true, the third signal named GLEAM-X J0704-37 may be the white dwarf pulsar, the rarest type of star in the Milky Way Galaxy.