Fast radio burst found in outskirts of an ancient galaxy

Last summer, astronomer Calvin Leung analyzed data from a new radio telescope to find the origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs) from Ursa Minor’s constellation. As a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, he aimed to understand and use these bursts to map the universe. He wrote most of the code to combine data from several telescopes to locate a burst.

However, confusion arose when the CHIME experiment found that the bursts came from the outskirts of an old, dead elliptical galaxy, which shouldn’t have the star (magnetar) that usually produces these bursts. The young stars that theorists believe produce these bursts should have disappeared long ago in this 11.3-billion-year-old galaxy, located 2 billion light years from Earth and weighing over 100 billion times the sun’s mass.

“This is the first fast radio burst (FRB) found outside a dead galaxy and is farther from its associated galaxy than any other FRB,” said Vishwangi Shah, a doctoral student at McGill University, Canada. This surprising location raises questions about how such energetic events can happen in areas without new star formation.

Shah refined Leung’s calculations about the burst’s location, FRB 20240209A. Shah is the lead author of a study on the FRB, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, along with a second paper by colleagues at Northwestern University. Leung, a co-author of both papers, developed three companion telescopes to the CHIME array and mentored Shah.

A third outrigger radio array, managed by the SETI Institute, will start operating this week at Hat Creek Observatory in Northern California. This will greatly enhance CHIME’s ability to locate FRBs with high precision.

“When combined with the three outriggers, we should be able to pinpoint one FRB to its galaxy every day, which is a significant improvement,” said Calvin Leung. “This new setup is 20 times more precise than CHIME with just two outrigger arrays.”

This accuracy will help optical telescopes identify the star groups that produce these bursts. Of the 5,000 detected FRBs, most were identified by CHIME, but only a few have been linked to specific galaxies, making it hard to confirm their origins.

Shah improved the accuracy of pinpointing by averaging many bursts and using data from different arrays. After the discovery of the FRB in February 2024, 21 more bursts were recorded by July 31. Additional data from another outrigger confirmed Shah’s findings with 20 times more precision.

“This result challenges theories that tie FRB origins to star-forming galaxies,” said Shah. “The source could be in a globular cluster, a dense region of old, dead stars outside the galaxy.” This would make FRB 20240209A only the second FRB linked to a globular cluster if confirmed.

“There is still much to discover about FRBs, and their environments could hold the key to their secrets,” said Tarraneh Eftekhari, who has an Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern and is the first author of the second paper.

“CHIME and its outrigger telescopes will let us do astrometry at a level unmatched by the Hubble or James Webb Space Telescopes,” Leung added. “It’s an amazing radio telescope.”

Journal Reference:

1. Vishwangi Shah, Kaitlyn Shin, Calvin Leung, Wen-fai Fong, Tarraneh Eftekhari, Mandana Amiri, Bridget C. Andersen, Shion Andrew, Mohit Bhardwaj, Charanjot Brar, Tomas Cassanelli, Shami Chatterjee, Alice Curtin, Matt Dobbs, Yuxin 雨欣 Dong 董, Fengqiu Adam Dong, Emmanuel Fonseca, B. M. Gaensler, Mark Halpern, Jason W. T. Hessels, Adaeze L. Ibik, Naman Jain, Ronniy C. Joseph, Jane Kaczmarek, Lordrick A. Kahinga, Victoria M. Kaspi, Bikash Kharel, Tom Landecker, Adam E. Lanman, Mattias Lazda, Robert Main, Lluis Mas-Ribas, Kiyoshi W. Masui, Ryan Mckinven, Juan Mena-Parra, Bradley W. Meyers, Daniele Michilli, Kenzie Nimmo, Ayush Pandhi, Swarali Shivraj Patil, Aaron B. Pearlman, Ziggy Pleunis, J. Xavier Prochaska, Masoud Rafiei-Ravandi, Mawson Sammons, Ketan R. Sand, Paul Scholz, Kendrick Smith, Ingrid Stairs. A Repeating Fast Radio Burst Source in the Outskirts of a Quiescent Galaxy. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2025; 979 (2): L21 DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad9ddc