Astronomers discover unique 'white dwarf' star

Astronomers have for the first time discovered a star with a super strong magnetic field in the Milky Way.

The newly found space object, about 4,200 light-years away from our solar system, is likely a magnetar or white dwarf, widely known as dead stars which are collapsed cores left after a sun-like star dies.

The result has been published in leading scientific journal Nature.

Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker from the Curtin University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research led the research. Research assistant Zhang Xiang from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory is the second author of the publication.

They first discovered something strange in early 2018 after using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in western Australia, a precursor instrument for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) – a global initiative to build the world's largest radio telescopes.

The unknown object sent out strong radio signals for about 30 to 60 seconds every 18 minutes, being one of the brightest radio sources in the sky. This was unique.

According to Zhang, the discovery indicates the existence of long-period magnetar in the Milky Way, which helps scientists understand stellar evolution and death. More research to figure out its origin and find more of its kind is underway.

The Shanghai Astronomical Observatory is a member of the MWA. China's SKA Regional Centre Prototype, funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is hosted by the observatory and contributed to processing the MWA observations used in this research.