What just happened? An international team of researchers have discovered a cosmic anomaly unlike anything previously witnessed. The object in question, located roughly 15,000 light-years away in our very own Milky Way galaxy, has been observed emitting both radio waves and X-ray radiation.

The celestial body, dubbed ASKAP J1832- 0911, was initially found by astronomers using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a radio telescope located in Australia. Another look using NASA’s Chandra X-Ray telescope found the object also emitted X-rays in an unusual yet predictable pattern.

Every 44 minutes, the object flashes both radio waves and X-rays for two minutes straight.

Team leader Zieng (Andy) Wang said the object is unlike anything they have seen before, although its origins are likely not as mysterious as one might initially think.

Wang said the object could very well be what’s left of a dead star with powerful magnetic fields, called a magnetar – or perhaps something as simple as a pair of stars in a binary system in which one of the two is a highly magnetized white dwarf.

Then again, neither explanation fully explains exactly what astronomers are witnessing with its behavior so the jury is still out. Conversely, Wang added, the discovery could be a new type of physics or a fresh model of stellar evolution we haven’t seen before.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory launched into space way back in 1999 and has been orbiting Earth ever since. The ASKAP radio telescope array has been operational since 2012, and consists of 36 giant antennas – each measuring 39 feet in diameter – that work together as one tool.

Further study will be needed to help astronomers better understand exactly what they are looking at. At 15,000 light-years away, the object is somewhat nearby in the grand scheme of the universe but still quite far away in actual distance. For reference, one light-year is roughly equal to six trillion miles.

The team’s research has been published in the journal Nature and is titled, “Detection of X-ray Emission from a Bright Long-Period Radio Transient.”