Two outback radio telescopes synchronised to observe the same point of sky have discovered more about one of the Universe's most mysterious events in new research published today.
The Curtin University-led Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescopes were searching the sky for fast radio bursts, which are exceptionally bright flashes of energy coming from deep space.
These extreme events last for only a millisecond but are so bright that many astronomers initially dismissed the first recorded fast radio burst as an observational error.
In research published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers describe how ASKAP detected several extremely bright fast radio bursts, but the MWA -- which scans the sky at lower frequencies -- did not see anything, even though it was pointed at the same area of sky at the same time.
Lead author Dr Marcin Sokolowski, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said the fact that the fast radio bursts were not observed at lower frequencies was highly significant.
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