Assam Researcher Barnali Das And Her Team Discover ‘Exotic’ Radio Stars Hotter Than Sun

Assam researcher Barnali Das, her supervisor Professor Poonam Chandra and her team have discovered eight ‘exotic’ radio stars which are hotter than the sun. They also have very strong magnetic fields and much stellar wind.

Their discovery described in a research paper has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. They have made use of the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) to discover eight stars which belong to this rare category. It has been shown for the first time that the radio pulses emitted by MRPs contain a vast amount of information regarding the stellar magnetosphere. Both Barnali Das and her supervisor were working on various projects with an aim to characterize the little known class of objects. They named them MRP or ‘Main-sequence Radio Pulse’ emitters.

“I am really happy to let you know about our discovery. First of all this not alone my work, my supervisor Prof Poonam Chandra has played a very active role in our research alongside team. Let me explain about our research. As you know there are so many stars up above of which some are colder and some are hotter than the sun. Our research aim was to find stars much hotter than the sun. These stars look blue. They are of more ten thousand kelvin heat. Some of them have strong magnetic field and they can react in a certain way in specific atmosphere. The first MRP was discovered in 2000 and after that there was notion that these stars are hard to spot," Barnali said in a Video Message, as per a report.

“The success of the GMRT programme has revolutionized our notion about this class of stars. Though it was only due to the high sensitivity of the uGMRT that the discovery of more such stars was possible. The success of the survey with the uGMRT suggest that the current notion of MRPs as rare objects may not be correct. Rather, they are probably more common but are difficult to detect,” she said.

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