Discovery of a 36-minute long-period transient ASKAP J142431.2-612611

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Main Authors: Pritchard, Joshua, Murphy, Tara, Dobie, Dougal, Lenc, Emil, Anumarlapudi, Akash, Caleb, Manisha, Grainger, Sophia, Hurley-Walker, Natasha, Kaplan, David L., McSweeney, Samuel J., Mitchell-Bolton, Jackson, Rose, Kovi, Sengar, Rahul, Wang, Ziteng, Willingham, Jayde, Zic, Andrew
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Pritchard, Joshua
Murphy, Tara
Dobie, Dougal
Lenc, Emil
Anumarlapudi, Akash
Caleb, Manisha
Grainger, Sophia
Hurley-Walker, Natasha
Kaplan, David L.
McSweeney, Samuel J.
Mitchell-Bolton, Jackson
Rose, Kovi
Sengar, Rahul
Wang, Ziteng
Willingham, Jayde
Zic, Andrew
author_facet Pritchard, Joshua
Murphy, Tara
Dobie, Dougal
Lenc, Emil
Anumarlapudi, Akash
Caleb, Manisha
Grainger, Sophia
Hurley-Walker, Natasha
Kaplan, David L.
McSweeney, Samuel J.
Mitchell-Bolton, Jackson
Rose, Kovi
Sengar, Rahul
Wang, Ziteng
Willingham, Jayde
Zic, Andrew
contents We report the discovery of a new long-period radio transient, ASKAP J142431.2-612611, with a 36 minute period, identified in the Australian SKA Pathfinder Evolutionary Map of the Universe survey. We detected pulsed emission from ASKAP J142431.2-612611 over a period of eight days during follow-up observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array, after which the source appears to have switched off. No optical or near-infrared counterpart is detected in archival surveys or in targeted Gemini South FLAMINGOS-2 observations. During its active state, the source exhibits a stable pulse profile with fractional polarisation consistent with 100%, evolving from elliptically to linearly polarised and tracing a well-defined great-circle trajectory on the Poincaré sphere. We show that this behaviour is consistent with fully linearly polarised intrinsic emission modified by propagation through a linearly polarised birefringent medium. This discovery expands the known population of long-period transients and highlights the intermittent nature of their activity. We discuss the implications for proposed models of long-period transients and outline future observations needed to constrain the origin of their intermittency and polarisation properties.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_07857
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discovery of a 36-minute long-period transient ASKAP J142431.2-612611
Pritchard, Joshua
Murphy, Tara
Dobie, Dougal
Lenc, Emil
Anumarlapudi, Akash
Caleb, Manisha
Grainger, Sophia
Hurley-Walker, Natasha
Kaplan, David L.
McSweeney, Samuel J.
Mitchell-Bolton, Jackson
Rose, Kovi
Sengar, Rahul
Wang, Ziteng
Willingham, Jayde
Zic, Andrew
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
We report the discovery of a new long-period radio transient, ASKAP J142431.2-612611, with a 36 minute period, identified in the Australian SKA Pathfinder Evolutionary Map of the Universe survey. We detected pulsed emission from ASKAP J142431.2-612611 over a period of eight days during follow-up observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array, after which the source appears to have switched off. No optical or near-infrared counterpart is detected in archival surveys or in targeted Gemini South FLAMINGOS-2 observations. During its active state, the source exhibits a stable pulse profile with fractional polarisation consistent with 100%, evolving from elliptically to linearly polarised and tracing a well-defined great-circle trajectory on the Poincaré sphere. We show that this behaviour is consistent with fully linearly polarised intrinsic emission modified by propagation through a linearly polarised birefringent medium. This discovery expands the known population of long-period transients and highlights the intermittent nature of their activity. We discuss the implications for proposed models of long-period transients and outline future observations needed to constrain the origin of their intermittency and polarisation properties.
title Discovery of a 36-minute long-period transient ASKAP J142431.2-612611
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07857