Manisha Caleb

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Manisha Pranati Caleb is an Indian and Australian astrophysicist whose research has used interferometry to detect fast radio bursts, [1] studied the local context of fast radio bursts, used their signals as probes into the distribution of matter in the universe, [2] and discovered repeating signals from what may be very slowly-rotating neutron stars. [3] [4] [5] She is a lecturer at the University of Sydney, in the Sydney Institute for Astronomy. [2]

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Education and career

Caleb was a student at Stella Maris College, Chennai in India from 2007 to 2010. She went to University College London in England for a master's degree involving spacecraft and satellite communications. Next, she became a doctoral student at the Australian National University, where she began her work on fast radio bursts. [1] [5] Her 2017 doctoral dissertation, A pursuit of fast radio transients with the UTMOST and Parkes radio telescopes, was jointly supervised by Frank Briggs, Brian Schmidt, Matthew Bailes, and Chris Flynn. [6]

She became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manchester in England [1] before returning to Australia for her present position as a lecturer in the Sydney Institute for Astronomy of the University of Sydney. [2]

Research

Some of Caleb's major results include the first use of interferometry to detect fast radio bursts, in 2017, [1] [B] confirmation of the extra-galactic origin of these bursts, [7] [A] and the discoveries of ultra-long-period pulsars PSR J0901–4046 in 2020, the former slowest known pulsar at roughly 76 seconds per pulse, [3] [C] and ASKAP J1935+2148 in 2024, with roughly 54 minutes per pulse. [4] [5] [D]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neutron star</span> Collapsed core of a massive star

A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star. It results from the supernova explosion of a massive star—combined with gravitational collapse—that compresses the core past white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei. Except for black holes, neutron stars are the smallest and densest known class of stellar objects. They have a radius on the order of 10 kilometers (6 mi) and a mass of about 1.4 M. Stars that collapse into neutron stars have a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses (M), or possibly more for those that are especially rich in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnetar</span> Type of neutron star with a strong magnetic field

A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (~109 to 1011 T, ~1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vulpecula</span> Constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere

Vulpecula is a faint constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for "little fox", although it is commonly known simply as the fox. It was identified in the seventeenth century, and is located in the middle of the Summer Triangle.

Stellar radio sources, radio source stars or radio stars are stellar objects that produce copious emissions of various radio frequencies, whether constant or pulsed. Radio emissions from stars can be produced in many varied ways.

PSR B1257+12, previously designated PSR 1257+12, alternatively designated PSR J1300+1240, is a millisecond pulsar located 2,300 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Virgo, rotating at about 161 times per second. It is also named Lich, after a powerful, fictional undead creature of the same name.

An astronomical radio source is an object in outer space that emits strong radio waves. Radio emission comes from a wide variety of sources. Such objects are among the most extreme and energetic physical processes in the universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulsar</span> Rapidly rotating neutron star

A pulsar is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Earth, and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission. Neutron stars are very dense and have short, regular rotational periods. This produces a very precise interval between pulses that ranges from milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsar. Pulsars are one of the candidates for the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crab Pulsar</span> Pulsar in the constellation Taurus

The Crab Pulsar is a relatively young neutron star. The star is the central star in the Crab Nebula, a remnant of the supernova SN 1054, which was widely observed on Earth in the year 1054. Discovered in 1968, the pulsar was the first to be connected with a supernova remnant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Astropulse</span> BOINC based volunteer computing SETI@home subproject

Astropulse is a volunteer computing project to search for primordial black holes, pulsars, and extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). Volunteer resources are harnessed through Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. In 1999, the Space Sciences Laboratory launched SETI@home, which would rely on massively parallel computation on desktop computers scattered around the world. SETI@home utilizes recorded data from the Arecibo radio telescope and searches for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space, signifying the presence of extraterrestrial technology. It was soon recognized that this same data might be scoured for other signals of value to the astronomy and physics community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vela Pulsar</span> Multi-spectrum pulsar in the constellation Vela

The Vela Pulsar is a radio, optical, X-ray- and gamma-emitting pulsar associated with the Vela Supernova Remnant in the constellation of Vela. Its parent Type II supernova exploded approximately 11,000–12,300 years ago.

Rotating radio transients (RRATs) are sources of short, moderately bright, radio pulses, which were first discovered in 2006. RRATs are thought to be pulsars, i.e. rotating magnetised neutron stars which emit more sporadically and/or with higher pulse-to-pulse variability than the bulk of the known pulsars. The working definition of what a RRAT is, is a pulsar which is more easily discoverable in a search for bright single pulses, as opposed to in Fourier domain searches so that 'RRAT' is little more than a label and does not represent a distinct class of objects from pulsars. As of March 2015 over 100 have been reported.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shrinivas Kulkarni</span> American-Indian astronomer (born 1956)

Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. He is a professor of astronomy and planetary science at California Institute of Technology, and was director of Caltech Optical Observatory (COO) at California Institute of Technology, overseeing the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honours.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PSR B1937+21</span> Pulsar in the constellation Vulpecula

PSR B1937+21 is a pulsar located in the constellation Vulpecula a few degrees in the sky away from the first discovered pulsar, PSR B1919+21. The name PSR B1937+21 is derived from the word "pulsar" and the declination and right ascension at which it is located, with the "B" indicating that the coordinates are for the 1950.0 epoch. PSR B1937+21 was discovered in 1982 by Don Backer, Shri Kulkarni, Carl Heiles, Michael Davis, and Miller Goss.

In astronomy, blitzars are a hypothetical type of neutron star, specifically pulsars that can rapidly collapse into black holes if their spinning slows down. Heino Falcke and Luciano Rezzolla proposed these stars in 2013 as an explanation for fast radio bursts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fast radio burst</span> Astronomical high energy transient pulse

In radio astronomy, a fast radio burst (FRB) is a transient radio pulse of length ranging from a fraction of a millisecond, for an ultra-fast radio burst, to 3 seconds, caused by some high-energy astrophysical process not yet understood. Astronomers estimate the average FRB releases as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun puts out in three days. While extremely energetic at their source, the strength of the signal reaching Earth has been described as 1,000 times less than from a mobile phone on the Moon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Bailes</span> Astrophysicist

Matthew Bailes is an astrophysicist and Professor at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology and the Director of OzGrav, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery. In 2015 he won an ARC Laureate Fellowship to work on Fast Radio Bursts. He is one of the most active researchers in pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts in the world. His research interests includes the birth, evolution of binary and millisecond pulsars, gravitational waves detection using an array of millisecond pulsars and radio astronomy data processing system design for Fast Radio Burst discovery. He is now leading his team to re-engineer the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope with a newly designed correlation system for observation of pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IGR J11014−6103</span> Nebula in the constellation Carina

IGR J11014−6103, also called the Lighthouse Nebula, is a pulsar wind nebula trailing the neutron star which has the longest relativistic jet observed in the Milky Way galaxy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duncan Lorimer</span> Astrophysicist

Duncan Ross Lorimer is a British-born American astrophysicist. He is a professor of physics and astronomy at West Virginia University, known for the discovery of the first fast radio burst in 2007.

PSR J0901–4046 is an ultra-long period pulsar. Its period, 75.9 seconds, is the longest for any known neutron star pulsar. Its period is more than three times longer than that of PSR J0250+5854, the previous long period record-holder. The pulses are narrow; radio emission is seen from PSR J0901–4046 for only 0.5% of its rotation period.

ASKAP J1935+2148 is a neutron star/magnetar candidate located in the constellation Vulpecula, approximately 15,800 light-years away. With a rotation period of 53.8 minutes, it would be the slowest spinning neutron star ever discovered.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Stella Maris College organised a Popular Lecture on Radio Astronomy and Fast Radio Bursts (PDF), Stella Maris College, 8 January 2020, retrieved 2024-06-25
  2. 1 2 3 "Academic Staff", Sydney Institute for Astronomy, University of Sydney, retrieved 2024-06-25
  3. 1 2 Unusual neutron star discovered in stellar graveyard, University of Sydney, 31 May 2022, retrieved 2024-06-25
  4. 1 2 Lea, Robert (7 June 2024), "Scientists find slowest spinning 'radio neutron star' — it breaks all the dead-star rules", Space.com, retrieved 2024-06-25
  5. 1 2 3 Mudur, G. S. (6 June 2024), "Astronomers announce their discovery of a dead star spinning at bafflingly slow rate; Indian astronomer in Australia leads discovery team", The Telegraph (India) , retrieved 2024-06-25
  6. "Manisha Pranati Caleb", AstroGen, American Astronomical Society, retrieved 2024-06-25
  7. Atkinson, Nancy (4 April 2017), "Extraterrestrial Origin Of Fast Radio Burst Phenomenon Confirmed", Universe Today, retrieved 2024-06-25