The object emits a radio wave beam every 20 minutes.
The team believes the object is a new class of slowly rotating neutron star with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. The signals were detected in the first three months of the year, but then vanished, suggesting they were linked to a starquake.
It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there is nothing known in the sky that does that.
The team believes the source of the signal is likely to be a spinning object rather than a technologically advanced civilisation.
Astronomers say a black hole may have swallowed a star.
It's definitely not aliens, said Hurley-Walker. It was ruled out after the team found out that the signal was visible across a broad spectrum of frequencies, meaning that an immense amount of energy would have been required to produce it.
The object is believed to be 4,000 light years away in the plane of the Milky Way, and it is also related to a class of stars with the most powerful magnetic field of any known one.
It is a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist.
A neutron star is a dense remnant left behind after a supermassive star casts off its outer material in a supernova. The size of a small city, neutron stars spin incredibly quickly as they pull their arms in to be more compact.
Fast-spinning neutron stars can be seen as pulsars.
Prof AndrewNorton, an astronomer at Open University, said that the star would lose energy and slow down over time.
Astronomers are confused as to why the object was still emitting enough energy to be seen when it was observed in the first quarter of the year.
There is a question about why the signal vanished. One possibility is that the signals are linked to a starquake, in which the neutron star's incredibly dense crust undergoes a sudden adjustment releasing a large blast of energy into space and, potentially, repeated waves of radio waves after the event.
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