A Fast Radio Burst Has Been Detected From Inside The Milky Way
MAY 7, 2020 BY BRIAN KOBERLEIN
Now and then there are bright flashes of radio light in the sky, and they are bothering astronomers. They are called Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), and they’re like the chirp of a smoke alarm that needs its battery changed. They last for such a short time that it’s difficult to track down the source. They have become a nagging mystery in astronomy.
One of the reasons FRBs are difficult to study is because most radio telescopes only capture a small portion of the sky at any given time. So they have only been observed if they are in the telescope’s field of view. There’s no way to predict where one might occur, and their short bursts can sometimes be confused with radio interference from Earth.
This changed when the CHIME observatory came online. It has a wide field of view, so it can observe dozens of radio bursts every day. Recently CHIME detected an FRB much closer than ever detected. So close that it must have occurred within our own galaxy.
Astronomers determine the distance of a radio burst through what is known as its dispersion measure (DM). The more distant a radio source, the more interstellar gas it must travel through to reach us. As the radio burst travels through this interstellar medium, the signal spreads out in frequency. The greater this dispersion, the greater the distance.
More:
https://www.universetoday.com/145986/a-fast-radio-burst-has-been-detected-from-inside-the-milky-way/