A Further Search for Galactic Stars with Double Radio Lobes

TL;DR

This study conducted an extensive search for double-lobed radio stars in large spectroscopic surveys, finding only a few candidates, confirming such objects are extremely rare, and revising the size of a known giant radio galaxy.

Contribution

It presents the first large-scale search for double-lobed radio stars using SDSS and LAMOST data, and proposes a new host for a giant radio galaxy, expanding understanding of radio star phenomena.

Findings

Only four promising double-lobed radio star candidates found.

Approximately 16% of LAMOST spectra may be misclassified.

Revised the host galaxy and size of a giant radio galaxy to 2.7 Mpc.

Abstract

Over a thousand stars in our Galaxy have been detected as radio emitters, but no normal stars are known to possess radio-emitting lobes similar to radio galaxies. Several recent attempts by us and other authors to find such objects remained inconclusive. Here we present a further search for double-lobed radio stars in two large samples of spectroscopic stars: over 20,000 white dwarves from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR12, and 2.5 million stars from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST). These were cross-matched with sources from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty Centimeters (FIRST) survey at 1.4 GHz to look for source pairs straddling the stars with moderate symmetry about the stars. We found only four promising candidates for double-lobed radio stars, confirming they must be extremely rare. By comparison with SDSS, we inferred that about 16 per cent of LAMOST spectra may have erroneous classifications. We also rediscovered the giant radio galaxy J0927+3510 and propose a different, more distant host, suggesting a much larger radio size of 2.7 Mpc.