Russian astronomers have reported the discovery of five new RRATs, using the Large Survey Antenna (BSA) of the Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory (PRAO), RT reports.
The scientists announced the details of this discovery in a research paper published July 22 in the journal arXiv.
Rotating Radio Transients (RRATs) are a subclass of pulsars characterized by intermittent emission.
The first organisms of this type were identified in 2006 as sporadic pulses appearing intermittently, with frequencies ranging from several minutes to several hours.
However, the nature of these transients remains unclear. In general, they are assumed to be normal pulsars with strong pulsations.
So far, just over 100 transient rotating radio stars have been found, so astronomers are interested in discovering more of this type in order to characterize them and improve our knowledge of their nature.
More recently, a team of astronomers led by Sergey Tyulbachev of the Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory analyzed data from observations from the Large Survey Antenna (BSA), at 111MHz, conducted in September 2015.
This led to the identification of fifty-four pulsating sources, five of which turned out to be new transient rotating radio stars.
In the research paper, the scientists pointed out that the newly discovered transiting radio stars bear the names: J0319 + 1341, J0641 + 0744, J1329 + 1344, J1336 + 3346, and J1556 + 0110.
Scientists are trying to explain why the five transient, rotating radio stars they reported were not detected during previous observations, and assumed that their pulse rate was low enough because the total observation time in the directions of these stars in previous surveys was not suitable to enable detection of even one of them.
Scientists hope that the longer observations will enable the detection of all transiting rotating radio stars whose glow is strong enough to exceed the sensitivity threshold of the Large Scanning Antenna (BSA) at least once in three days.
