IdentifyingthesourceofperytonsattheParkesradiotelescope.pdfVIP

arXiv:1504.02165v1 [astro-ph.IM] 9 Apr 2015 Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 000–000 (0000) Printed 10 April 2015 (MN LATEX style ?le v2.2) Identifying the source of perytons at the Parkes radio telescope E. Petro?1,2,3 , E. F. Keane1,4,3, E. D. Barr1,3, J. E. Reynolds2, J. Sarkissian2, P. G. Edwards2, J. Stevens2, C. Brem2, A. Jameson1, S. Burke-Spolaor5, S. Johnston2, N. D. R. Bhat6,3, P. Chandra7, S. Kudale7, S. Bhandari1,3 1 Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Mail H30, PO Box 218, VIC 3122, Australia. 2 CSIRO Astronomy Space Science, Australia Telescope National Facility, P.O. Box 76, Epping, NSW 1710, Australia 3 ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO). 4 SKA Organisation, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire, SK11 9DL, UK 5 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 1003 Lopezville Rd., Socorro, NM 87801, USA 6 International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin University, Bentley, WA 6102, Australia 7 National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune University Campus, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411 007, India 10 April 2015 ABSTRACT “Perytons” are millisecond-duration transients of terrestrial origin, whose frequency-swept emission mimics the dispersion of an astrophysical pulse that has propagated through tenuous cold plasma. In fact, their similarity to FRB 010724 had previously cast a shadow over the interpretation of “fast radio bursts,” which otherwise appear to be of extragalactic origin. Until now, the physical origin of the dispersionmimicking perytons had remained a mystery. We have identi?ed strong out-of-band emission at 2.3–2.5 GHz associated with several peryton events. Subsequent tests revealed that a peryton can be generated at 1.4 GHz when a microwave oven door is opened prematurely and the telescope is at an appropriate relative angle. Radio emission escaping from microwave ovens during the magnetron shut-down phase neatly explain all of the observed pro