Dwingeloo Telescope detects fast radio burst

On Wednesday, March 13, the Dwingeloo Telescope detected a flash from the Fast Radio Burst (FRB) FRB 20240114A. This is the first time an FRB has been measured with the Dwingeloo Telescope. This detection has been independently confirmed by the radio telescopes in Onsala (Sweden) and Stockert (Germany).

Fast Radio Bursts are bright radio flashes from space. The phenomenon was discovered in 2007. From the signal, we can determine that they come from far beyond our Milky Way. The origin of these bright radio flashes is still unknown. Some FRBs have only been detected once, while others repeat. FRB 20240114A is one of these repeating FRBs and is currently relatively active. It was first detected on January 14, 2024, by the CHIME radio telescope and has since been seen by many other radio telescopes.

For the volunteers of CAMRAS, the detection is a breakthrough: it is the first time that a flash from an FRB has been observed with the Dwingeloo Telescope, which was built in 1956. The activity of the source is relatively rare: in the twenty observation days since January, the first flash has now been found after nearly a hundred hours of observation and over five terabytes of data. The precise time of detection is 2024-03-13 11:02:06.397 UTC.

What makes the detection with the Dwingeloo Telescope even more special is that the receiver, built by radio amateurs, were not specifically optimized for receiving broadband signals like those from FRBs. This also means that the receivers can still be improved to better receive the signals in the future.

The professional radio astronomers at ASTRON are actively researching fast radio bursts and have detected many with the telescopes in Westerbork. The first detection with the Dwingeloo Telescope shows that this telescope can still be used for current research. CAMRAS also shares the results with professional astronomers. After the first detection, CAMRAS joined the existing EuroFlash project, which monitors FRBs with ‘small’ European dishes. On 2 April 2024, this collaboration published an Astronomer’s Telegram with over 100 FRB detections. The first Dwingeloo detection was included in the accompanying image. In the context of the EuroFlash project also telescopes in Westerbork, Stockert (Duitsland) en Onsala (Zweden) are observing.

In the data from the Dwingeloo Telescope, in addition to the first detected flash, three more flashes have been found on 2024-03-12 10:43:24.188 UTC, 2024-03-13 09:18:21.738 UTC, and 2024-03-22 13:39:27.687.

Thanks to all CAMRAS volunteers who made this detection possible, especially the observers. So far, these have been Hans van der Meer, Roel Ovinge, Harm Munk, Simon Bijlsma, Marc Wolf, Tjipke de Beer, Gerard Boons, Paul Boven, and Michael Sanders.