Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope(GMRT) and FRBs: Pune telescope helps make major breakthrough

What is the News?

Astronomers of the National Center of Radio Astrophysics(NCRA-TIFR) in Pune and the University of California in the US have used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope(GMRT) to map the distribution of atomic hydrogen gas from the host galaxy of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) for the first time.

What are Fast Radio Bursts(FRB)?

FRBs are bright bursts of radio waves (radio waves can be produced by astronomical objects with changing magnetic fields) whose durations lie in the millisecond scale, because of which it is difficult to detect them and determine their position in the sky.

The first FRB was discovered in 2007, since then scientists have been working towards finding the source of their origin.

What did the astronomers find out?

Astronomers found that the FRB host galaxy has undergone a recent ‘merger’, and the FRB ‘progenitor’ is most likely a massive star formed due to this merger event. 

This is the first case of direct evidence for a recent merger in an FRB host, a major step towards understanding the origins of the FRBs.

The first surprise during this observation was the amount of atomic hydrogen in the FRB galaxy, which was around 10 times more than that found in similar nearby galaxies. 

What is the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope(GMRT)?

GMRT is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes of 45-meter diameter, observing at meter wavelengths. 

Purpose: It is a very versatile instrument for investigating a variety of radio astrophysical problems ranging from the nearby Solar system to the edge of the observable Universe

Operated by: It is operated by the National Center for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

Location: Pune

Source: This post is based on the article “Pune telescope helps make major breakthrough” published in The Hindu on 23rd February 2022.