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Astronomers Record Mystery Radio Signals From 5.5 Billion Light Years Away
sarahnaomi writes For the first time ever, astronomers have captured an enormous radio wave burst in real time, bringing us one step closer to understanding their origins. These fleeting eruptions, called blitzars or FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts), are truly bizarre cosmic phenomena. In the span of a millisecond, they emit as much radiation as the Sun does over a million years. But unlike other super-luminous events that span multiple wavelengths—gamma ray bursts or supernovae, for example—blitzars emit all that energy in a tiny band of the radio light spectrum. Adding to the mystery is the rarity of blitzar sightings. Since these bursts were first discovered in 2007 with Australia's Parkes Telescope, ten have been identified, the latest of which was the first to be imaged in real time.
If you had read the article, you would know that until now, they had to sift through old data to find these things, so they couldn't ask other radio-telescopes to look at it. This time the data was analyzed in real time and triggered an alarm so other radio-telescopes could look at it in other wavelengths, etc.
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What they are, admittedly awkwardly, trying to say is that the Fast Radio Burst was detected as it was happening, enabling follow up investigations to catch the immediate after effects. Previous such bursts were detected much later, too late to do any kind of follow up leading some to question if the events were even extra planetary.
In many cases they're looking for afterglow or secondary effects. When a gamma ray burst is observed, it's common to request optical telescopes to point in the direction of the burst in the hopes they'll see what caused it.
When an event emits at a particular wave-length; that event probably emitted at other wavelengths as well. Since different wavelengths travel at different speeds, it's still possible to observe other data from the same event a bit later.