Plate Nº 30 · recorded November 13, 2026
Space & AstronomyReported finding
Radio Pulses Every 7.9 Minutes Trace Storms on a Sun-Like Star
Astronomers traced 7.9-minute radio pulses to a white dwarf orbiting a Sun-like star 5,000 light-years away, catching flares and a plasma prominence on the companion.
By Priya Raman3 min read695 words
In brief
- A white dwarf emits radio pulses every 7.9 minutes while orbiting a Sun-like G-type star 5,000 light-years away.
- It is the first long-period transient definitively paired with a Sun-like companion; only about a dozen LPTs are known.
- The team processed over 100 hours of radio data at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre to confirm the orbital motion.
- The pulses revealed stellar flares and a likely plasma prominence on the Sun-like star; the study was published in Nature Astronomy on November 12, 2026.
Every 7.9 minutes, a dead star 5,000 light-years from Earth fires a pulse of radio waves toward our telescopes. Astronomers at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have now traced that signal to a white dwarf orbiting a star much like our Sun — the first time such a pairing has ever been confirmed.
The discovery, published on November 12, 2026 in the journal Nature Astronomy, resolves a question that has lingered over a rare class of cosmic objects since their discovery five years ago.
The system carries the catalog name GPM J071507-114153. It consists of a low-mass white dwarf — the compact, burned-out remnant of a star — circling a G-type star, the same spectral category as the Sun. Together they belong to an exceedingly rare class known as long-period transients, or LPTs: objects that switch their radio emission on and off over timescales of minutes to hours.
Why does this system matter?
Astronomers know of only about a dozen long-period transients. The same ICRAR team found the first one in 2021. Until now, every LPT involving a white dwarf appeared to be paired with a red dwarf — a smaller, cooler star than the Sun.
That pattern left a basic question unanswered: in these pairs, which star actually produces the pulses?
The new system answers it. The signal from GPM J071507-114153 is sharp enough to reveal the white dwarf's motion along its orbit, which pins the source of the pulsations to a region close to the white dwarf — or possibly the white dwarf itself.
"This is the first time the pulses are clear enough to see the white dwarf moving in its orbit around its companion, so we know that the pulsations are coming from a region close to the white dwarf, or possibly even from the white dwarf itself," said Dr. Sam McSweeney, an astronomer at ICRAR and a commissioning scientist with the Square Kilometre Array Observatory.
Confirming that motion took considerable computational effort. Dr. McSweeney and his colleagues processed more than 100 hours of radio data at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre before they could verify the orbital movement embedded in the signal.
What did the pulses reveal beyond the orbit?
The steady beat of the white dwarf's radio emission worked like a searchlight sweeping across its companion, and it exposed weather on the Sun-like star.
The team detected stellar flares on the companion — eruptions analogous to those that trigger aurorae here on Earth. They also watched the white dwarf pass behind what is most likely a stellar prominence, a vast loop of plasma erupting from the star's surface and anchored by a strong magnetic field.
"The pulses emitted by the white dwarf allowed our team to detect stellar flares on the Sun-like star, similar to those that create aurorae here on Earth," said Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astronomer at ICRAR. "As a bonus, we also saw the white dwarf moving behind a region with a strong magnetic field, most likely a 'stellar prominence,' which is a large loop of plasma erupting from a star's surface."
For Dr. Hurley-Walker, the reach of the technique is its own reward. "It's amazing that by using radio wavelengths we can detect the storms on a star over 5,000 light-years away," she said.
How firm are the findings?
The orbital attribution rests on more than 100 hours of processed data, and the paper's claim about the prominence carries a hedge — the researchers describe it as "most likely" rather than certain, since the observation is a radio silhouette rather than a direct image. Whether the pulses originate just above the white dwarf or on it directly also remains open.
What is settled is the headline result: for the first time, a long-period transient has been definitively linked to a white dwarf with a Sun-like companion, and the pulses themselves have been located on the white dwarf's side of the pair.
A dead star's metronome, ticking every 7.9 minutes, is now a weather station for another Sun.
via sci.news (Source)
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Senior reporter covering people, launches and day-to-day practice in general science news at SciBeat.
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