An international team of astronomers has traced one of the brightest one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) ever observed – FRB 20250316A – to a galaxy 130 million light-years away. Using the Canadian CHIME radio telescope and its newly completed outrigger stations, the team localized the burst to a region just 45 light-years wide, the most precise localization of such a powerful non-repeating FRB to date.
The study, led by Amanda Cook (McGill University) and with major contributions from Nina Gusinskaia and Omar Ould-Boukattine (ASTRON), shows that the burst does not repeat, challenging prevailing models of FRBs. Complementary James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data revealed a faint infrared counterpart at the same location, offering new clues to these mysterious cosmic flashes.
The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in two companion papers (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/adf62f and DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/adf29f)
Read the full press release from ASTRON here
Image: Two filtered JWST images, along with a zoom-in on the location of FRB 20250316A and its possible counterpart. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/CfA/P. Blanchard et al.; Image processing: CfA/P. Edmonds