Star emitting a combination of radio waves, X-rays spotted

Researchers said the star belongs to a class of objects called "long-period radio transients," known for bright bursts of radio waves that appear every few minutes to several hours. What these objects are and how they generate their unusual signals remain a mystery.

- Reuters

WASHINGTON: Astronomers have spotted a star acting unlike any other ever observed as it unleashes a curious combination of radio waves and X-rays, pegging it as an exotic member of a class of celestial objects first identified only three years ago.

It is located in the Milky Way galaxy about 15,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Scutum, flashing every 44 minutes in both radio waves and X-ray emissions.

The researchers said it belongs to a class of objects called "long-period radio transients," known for bright bursts of radio waves that appear every few minutes to several hours. This is much longer than the rapid pulses in radio waves typically detected from pulsars—a type of speedily rotating neutron star, the dense collapsed core of a massive star after its death.

Pulsars appear, as viewed from Earth, to be blinking on and off on timescales of milliseconds to seconds.