For the first time, astronomers have definitively spotted a flaring magnetar in another galaxy.
These ultra-magnetic stellar corpses were thought to be responsible for some of the highest-energy explosions in the nearby universe. But until
this burst, no one could prove it, astronomers reported January 13 at the virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society and in papers in
Nature and
Nature Astronomy.
Astronomers have seen flaring magnetars in the Milky Way, but those are so bright that it’s impossible to get a good look at them. Possible glimpses of flaring magnetars in other galaxies may have been spotted before, too. But “the others were all a little circumstantial, and not as rock solid,” says astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi of the McGill Space Institute in Montreal, who was not involved in the new discovery. “Here you have something that is so incontrovertible, it’s like, okay, this is it. There’s no question anymore.”
The first sign of the magnetar arrived as a blast of X-rays and gamma rays on April 15. Five telescopes in space, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Mars Odyssey orbiter, observed the blast, giving scientists enough information to track down its source: the galaxy NGC 253, or the Sculptor galaxy, 11.4 million light-years away.
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