EMDRC Main Meeting - 6th March - Modern Radio Astronomy

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Our Main club meeting at the Willis room at the whitehorse civic centre nunawadding friday 6th March 2015 will see a Phd Candidate student from Swinburne University, Emily Petroff talk about modern radio astronomy, using the Australian parkes telescope and her work on discovering real time short duration microwave bursts using the telescope.

everyone welcome. (non members always welcome) for what should be a VERY interesting talk. 7:30 for an 8pm start,

nunawadding civic centre. see the clubs website for a map.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-20/c ... ts/6029684

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/mys ... s-answers/

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4165358.htm

and a video of emily talking on ABC news24 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-21/c ... ce/6031196

On May 14, 2014, scientists at Swinburne University in Australia caught a huge high-energy burst of radio waves on CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope in eastern Australia. Called a “fast radio burst”, the signal lasted a few milliseconds, but it gave off as much energy as the sun does in a day, said Daniele Malesani, astrophysicist at the Dark Cosmology Center, University of Copenhagen.

Whatever caused the cosmic radio burst must be cataclysmic, huge and at least 5.5 billion light years from Earth, astronomer Emily Petroff of Swinburne University told New Scientist. The study on the fast radio burst was published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Fast radio bursts are still a great cosmic mystery. These cosmic radio bursts were first discovered in the Parkes Radio Telescope’s archival data in 2007. It was called the Lorimer burst, and it lasted for only 5 milliseconds. For years, the scientific community debated if the radio bursts were real or a flaw in the data.

Since then, seven events have been uncovered in Parkes’ data and in data from the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico. Based on early estimates, scientists believe there could be as many as 10,000 of these radio bursts a day, each lasting only a few milliseconds.

No one knows where exactly they come from, or what causes them. Astronomers have postulated that the mystery radio signals come from exploding stars or supernovas. They could also be caused when binary neutron stars or binary white dwarf stars collide.

Another possible source of the cosmic radio waves is a phenomenon called a “blitzar.” Blitzars are supermassive neutron stars that should have become a black hole, but they are spinning so fast they are temporarily prevented from collapsing.

(Sorry, science fiction fans. Fast radio bursts are not likely caused by aliens.)

Catching the fast radio burst in real-time did rule out several suspects, Malesani explained in a press release. When the Parkes telescope caught the burst, they alerted 12 other telescopes to take measurements in visible, infrared, X-rays and ultraviolet light. Those observations found nothing, which was important, Malesani said.

“We found out what it wasn’t. The burst could have hurled out as much energy in a few milliseconds as the Sun does in an entire day. But the fact that we did not see light in other wavelengths eliminates a number of astronomical phenomena that are associated with violent events such as gamma-ray bursts from exploding stars and supernovae, which were otherwise candidates for the burst.”

Petroff and her team are now waiting to catch another burst to get more answers about the phenomenon.

“We have set the trap. Now we simply need to hold up for another burst to fall into it,” Petroff said in a release from the Royal Astronomical Society.

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This Friday evening’s EMDRC meeting will held in the Willis Room at the Whitehorse Centre, Nunawading.

The presentation will centre on a Cosmic Radio Burst caught red-handed by Astro Physicist Emily Petroff.

See attachment for a schematic illustration of CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope receiving the polarised signal from the new ‘fast radio burst’

A short, sharp flash of radio waves from a mysterious source up to 5.5 billion light years from Earth has been detected by CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia. 19 January 2015
Swinburne University of Technology PhD student, Emily Petroff, 'saw' the burst live - a first for astronomers.
Lasting only milliseconds, the first such radio burst was discovered in 2007 by astronomers combing old Parkes data archives for unrelated objects.
Six more bursts, apparently from outside our Galaxy, have now been found with the Parkes telescope and a seventh with the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.
Astronomers worldwide have been vying to explain the phenomenon.
"These bursts were generally discovered weeks, months or even more than a decade after they happened," Ms Petroff said.
"We are the first to catch one in real time."

Confident that she would spot a 'live' burst, Ms Petroff had an international team of astronomers poised to make rapid follow-up observations, at wavelengths from radio to X-ray.
After the Parkes telescope saw the burst go off, the team swung into action on twelve telescopes around the world – in Australia, California, the Canary Islands, Chile, Germany and Hawaii – as well as space-based telescopes.

CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope is the first to capture a fast radio burst as it happened.

As an aside, Emily’s Mum is a Ham Radio Operator, KD7WYM in Portland, Oregon

The Willis Room is air-conditioned, comfortable and easy to get to.

Melways Reference Map-48 G-9 or see attached map, and there's plenty of parking at the venue.

More information about our club’s activities can be found at www.emdrc.com.au

See you there.

Carl Schlink VK3EMF

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sounds like an interesting talk. Any chance of video + youtube so the lecture can reach a wider audience?

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I would also be interested in watching if it were recorded. Probably a bit late now to mention.

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It wasn't taped. Sorry. Was a very interesting night.


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