Shedding (Multi-wavelength) Light on a Fast Radio Burst

Gemini composite image of the field around FRB 121102 (indicated). The dwarf host galaxy was imaged, and spectroscopy performed, using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea in Hawai'i. Data was obtained on October 24-25 and November 2, 2016. Video animation also available at press release URL above. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA/NSF/NRC.

Gemini Observatory provides critical rapid follow up observations of a Fast Radio Burst – revealing the first details on a burst’s distant extragalactic host.

The opening press conference at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society earlier this month presented an international team’s research using multi-wavelength observations to pinpoint and characterize a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) for the first time. After the burst’s location was determined using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), Gemini North followed up with spectroscopy and imaging. The Gemini data revealed a dwarf galaxy host, only about 1% the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy, some three billion light-years away. The fact that this FRB repeated (unique among known FRBs) made it possible to determine its location.

The Gemini characterization of the host galaxy was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and accompanied the research team’s results on a campaign to precisely locate the FRB, which was published in the journal Nature.

"The collaboration of Gemini working with radio telescopes around the world, each looking at the Universe in such different ways, is what allowed us to make this breakthrough," said Shami Chatterjee, of Cornell University who led the research. "The simple fact that we have uncovered an extragalactic host for a fast radio burst is a huge advance in our understanding," he adds. More details can be found in the Gemini press release.