SIGN OF NATURAL DISASTER? Exploding Star SHINES Brighter Than Any Supernova SEEN
The most glowing exploding star ever detected has bewildered scientists with its incredible power, beaming 570 billion times brighter compared to the Sun and twice as potent as any known supernova, scientists said Thursday.Known as ASASSN15lh, it is about 3.8 billion light years away from Earth, making it among the closest ever uncovered in a course known as aglow supernova, said the report in the journal Science.
But it’s 200 times more powerful compared to the typical supernova, and 20 times brighter than all the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy joined, leaving astronomers perplexed about the way that it produces such energy.
“We must inquire, how is that even possible?” said co-principal investigator Krzysztof Stanek of Ohio State University, which leads a job by means of a host of little telescopes all over the world to find glowing things in the universe, called the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, or ASAS-SN, pronounced “assassin.”ASAS-SN has found around 250 supernovae since 2014, including the latest one which started to flare up in June 2015.It was glimpsed by twin telescopes with 14-centimeter diameter lenses in Cerro Tololo, Chile.
Astronomers spread the phrase regarding the sighting of ASASSN15lh, shortly more observations poured in from bigger, earth-based telescopes all over the world and Nasa’s Swift satellite.
The 10-meter South African Large Telescope (SALT) found the elemental signatures that confirmed ASASSN15lh’s distance and potency.”Upon seeing the spectral signatures from SALT and understanding that we’d found the strongest supernova yet, I had been overly excited to sleep the remaining night time,” said Dong, who learned of the SALT results at 2 AM in Beijing on July 1, 2015.
As to what may be powering the supernova, scientists stay stumped but optimistic the Hubble Space Telescope will tell them more in the coming months regarding the supernova as well as the galaxy it calls house.”The honest answer is now that individuals have no idea what could function as the power source for ASASSN15lh,” said Dong.One theory is the thing in the middle of the blast may be an extremely uncommon kind of star called a magnetar, which spins quickly and possesses an ultra powerful magnetic field.
But if additional research suggests that the thing is based on the middle of a galaxy that is big, then it might not be a magnetar after all, as well as a supernova. Rather, it may be an indication of “uncommon atomic action around a supermassive black hole,” said a statement by Ohio University.”it’d be something never before seen in the middle of a galaxy,” it said.
