Also thanks to the Sardinia Radio Telescope of Cagliari the fast radio flash (mysterious phenomenon discovered only a few years ago) closest to the Earth has been identified, even 40 times closer than any other observed so far.
Named FRB 20200120E, it is located about 12 million light years from our planet and has exploded in an unexpected region, a globular cluster full of ancient stars and not as young and massive as expected.
The discovery is published in two articles in Nature and Nature Astronomy by an international group of experts in which researchers from the National Institute of Astrophysics (Inaf) also participate. The fast radio flash FRB 20200120E, which repeats itself over time, has its source in the Bode Galaxy (M81 or NGC 3031), in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major.
To study it at the highest possible resolution and sensitivity, the scientists combined measurements from the 12 telescopes of the European VLBI Network (EVN) and integrated them with data from several other telescopes. Among the antennas involved, all the INAF radio telescopes are included: in addition to the Sardinia Radio Telescope also the radio telescopes of Medicina (Bologna) and Noto (Syracuse). Experts propose that FRB 20200120E comes from a highly magnetized neutron star formed by the accretion-induced collapse of a white dwarf or the merger of compact stars into a binary system. Some flashes were shorter than expected: down to a few tens of nanoseconds.
"This tells us they come from a tiny volume in the smallest space of a football field, perhaps only tens of meters in diameter," says Kenzie Nimmo, researcher at Astron and University of Amsterdam and first author of the Nature Astronomy paper. "Some of the signals we have measured are short and extremely powerful. This suggests that we are indeed seeing a magnetar, but in a place where they have not been found before."
“The result is part of a very large project aimed at locating FRBs - explains Marta Burgay, Inaf of Cagliari -. The objective is twofold: on the one hand to understand at what distance they are located (and therefore to determine all their intrinsic and not only apparent properties, first of all the brightness) and on the other to determine in which type of environment they originate, for have indications on what their ancestors could be ".
“It is above all the result of a very flexible way of using the European radio telescope network outside of ordinary sessions - adds Gabriele Surcis, also from INAF of Cagliari -. Whenever a sufficient number of radio telescopes have time, a few candidates are selected and patiently observed until the fast radio burst arrives, which is usually recognized using special detectors. At that point the signals of the whole network are combined and the event is localized with great spatial accuracy ".
(Unioneonline / D)