Telescopes & Life Beyond Earth
My colleagues Adam Deller and Chris Flynn have just published a Nature Astronomy article about the upgrades we are doing to Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope. “A cost-efficient overhaul of the 50-year-old Molonglo radio telescope will equip it as a standalone fast radio burst detector and localizer, explain Adam Deller and Chris Flynn.”
Back in March last year, we reported the serendipitous detection of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB 180301) during our Breakthrough Listen observations at the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in Australia. We are pleased to announce that a preprint of our analysis paper is now available, thanks to our collaboration with the SUPERB FRB team. FRBs are enigmatic radio signals that are incredibly bright and incredibly short lived. They last only for a few milliseconds, but can release more energy in their short life than the…Continue Reading “FRB 180301: Astrophysical, aliens or anthropogenic?”
Detection of FRB 180301 with the Breakthrough Listen backend instrument at the Parkes Radio Telescope. The top panel shows the de-dispersed pulse while the bottom panel shows the frequency structure with the pulse dispersed across ~340 MHz of the observed band. During our observations at the Parkes radio telescope yesterday, we detected a mysterious and fleeting phenomena known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRBs). As we did when we caught the only FRB known to repeat, FRB 121102, in the act, we’ve written up initial…Continue Reading “Breakthrough Listen detects a new Fast Radio Burst”