http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0302_050302_galactic_radio.html

Radio Waves Detected Coming From Center of Galaxy

Brian Handwerk
National Geographic News

March 2, 2005
Astronomers have detected an unusual, powerful burst of intermittent radio waves emanating from the direction of the center of our galaxy.

Now the search is on to trace the source of the mystery radio bursts, or at least find more like it. Was it a dying star "burping" its last radio emissions? Or is there something out there completely new to science?

...

"The most spectacular aspect of this is that five bursts occurred at regular intervals of about an hour and a quarter [77 minutes]," Hyman said. "They were at a constant intensity … and each burst had basically the same time profile." Each burst lasted about ten minutes.

Hyman and colleagues reported their findings in this week's Nature.

Radio Pulses Could Signal New Class of Astronomical Object

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000566BB-3204-1226-B20483414B7F0000

Scott Hyman of Sweet Briar College and his colleagues analyzed data collected from years of monitoring the center of the Milky Way galaxy using the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico. Radio waves having wavelengths around one meter long were of particular interest to the team: between September 30 and October 1, 2002, they detected five bursts of such radiation, which repeated at regular intervals. The bursts coming from the new source, dubbed GCRT J1745-3009, each lasted about 10 minutes and repeated on a 77-minute cycle for nearly seven hours. In addition, the source is not stationary. "It [GCRT J1745-3009] has not been detected since 2002," Hyman notes, "nor is it present on earlier images."