A Galactic Origin for the Fast Radio Burst FRB010621

The recent detection of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) has generated strong interest in identifying the origin of these bright, non-repeating, highly dispersed pulses. The principal limitation in understanding the origin of these bursts is the lack of reliable distance estimates; their high dispersion measures imply that they may be at cosmological distances ($0.1 < z < 1.0$). Here we discuss new distance constraints to the FRB010621 (a.k.a J1852$-$08) first reported by Keane. We use velocity resolved $Hα$ and $Hβ$ observations of diffuse ionised gas toward the burst to calculate an extinction-corrected emission measure along the line of sight. We combine this emission measure with models of Galactic rotation and of electron distribution to derive a 90% probability of the pulse residing in the Galaxy. However, we cannot differentiate between the two Galactic interpretations of Keane: a neutron star with unusual pulse amplitude distribution or Galactic black hole annihilation.

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