Highlights — Some exciting recent scientific results from our group

Researchers explore the low-frequency gravitational wave universe with MeerKAT

The most sensitive map of the gravitational wave sky to date was produced by an international collaboration of researchers including numerous scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. To achieve this goal, the scientists analysed 4.5 years of pulsar data taken with the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world. more

A million radio sources probe the motion of the solar system and provide a fundamental test of cosmology

Using data from the MeerKAT radio telescope, an international team of astronomers from the MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey (MALS) collaboration have compiled the largest catalog of radio sources from any MeerKAT survey to date. The MALS collaboration includes a number of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. With this catalog, they were able to make a measurement of the cosmic radio dipole, a cosmological effect that arises from the Earth’s motion through the Universe, and provides an important test of our theories of cosmology at the largest scales. While many other measurements in the past 10 years have disagreed with predictions of the magnitude of the effect, what they found was consistent with predictions, a surprising result in itself. This new measurement demonstrates the value of the sensitive MeerKAT data, and shows that such deep data provide extremely valuable insights into the origin of the cosmic dipole effect. more

Astronomers find and study multiple rare and unusual pulsars in dense stellar cluster using MeerKAT in South Africa and the U.S. Green Bank Telescope

An international team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory has discovered ten rapidly rotating neutron stars in the globular cluster Terzan 5. Many of them are in unusual and rare binaries, including a potential candidate for a record-breaking double neutron star, a pulsar in an extremely elliptical orbit, and several “spider” systems in which the neutron stars are evaporating their companions. These finds in data from the MeerKAT radio telescope array increase the number of known millisecond pulsars in this very dense stellar cluster by more than a quarter to a total of 49. The research team hopes to discover more pulsars in possibly even more extreme binaries: They plan to sift through all Terzan 5 data recorded with MeerKAT by using the massive computing power of the citizen science project Einstein@Home run at the MPI for Gravitational Physics. more

The rapid decay of a magnetar’s precession after an X-ray outburst likely rules out free precession as their origin

An international research team led by Gregory Desvignes from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has used the Effelsberg and Jodrell Bank radio telescopes to observe the precessing magnetar XTE J1810-197 — a highly magnetised and ultra-dense neutron star — shortly after its X-ray enhanced activity and radio reactivation. This precession damped on a timescale of a few months challenging some models used to explain the origin of the mysterious repeating fast radio bursts. more

MeerKAT uncovers a mysterious object at the boundary between black holes and neutron stars

An international team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, have used the MeerKAT radio telescope to discover an intriguing object of an unknown nature in the globular cluster NGC 1851. The massive object is heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known and yet simultaneously lighter than the lightest black holes known and is in orbit around a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar. This could be the first discovery of the much-coveted radio pulsar - black hole binary; a stellar pairing that would allow new tests of Einstein’s general relativity. more