👀👀👀 A new long-period radio transient! The population grows! GLEAM-X J 0704−37 has a period of 2.9 hours (longest period yet detected!) and is linearly polarized ... and ... it likely has an identified companion (an M3 Dwarf). Discovered in the archival low-frequency data from the MWA. 🔭🧪📡
We present a long-period radio transient (GLEAM-X J0704-37) discovered to have an optical counterpart, consistent with a cool main sequence star of spectral type M3. The radio pulsations occur at...
Neat & weird. Conclusion option 5 (~ 6 year periodicity): do you think the authors thought about (and maybe discounted) the possibility of an outer partner orbiting the inner binary? Is that what they mean by "super-orbital modulation" (in §3.3 just before fig 4 in the pdf)?
The reason I am excited about these is because we don't know what they are as yet! Pulsars have periods that are much smaller (faster rotators) than these things. So we are seeing a new population of slower rotators emerging. Read more about it here: www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/fe...