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X-ray astronomy is an observational branch of astronomy which deals with the study of X-ray observation and detection from astronomical objects. X-radiation is absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere, so instruments to detect X-rays must be taken to high altitude by balloons, sounding rockets, and satellites. X-ray astronomy uses a type of space telescope that can see x-ray radiation which standard optical telescopes, such as the Mauna Kea Observatories, cannot.
In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies, described by NASA as "the most powerful class of explosions in the universe". They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours. After an initial flash of gamma rays, a longer-lived "afterglow" is usually emitted at longer wavelengths.
A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions, of times the mass of the Sun (M☉). Black holes are a class of astronomical objects that have undergone gravitational collapse, leaving behind spheroidal regions of space from which nothing can escape, including light. Observational evidence indicates that almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. For example, the Milky Way galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, corresponding to the radio source Sagittarius A*. Accretion of interstellar gas onto supermassive black holes is the process responsible for powering active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars.
Messier 82 (also known as NGC 3034, Cigar Galaxy or M82) is a starburst galaxy approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is the second-largest member of the M81 Group, with the D25 isophotal diameter of 12.52 kiloparsecs (40,800 light-years). It is about five times more luminous than the Milky Way and its central region is about one hundred times more luminous. The starburst activity is thought to have been triggered by interaction with neighboring galaxy M81. As one of the closest starburst galaxies to Earth, M82 is the prototypical example of this galaxy type. SN 2014J, a type Ia supernova, was discovered in the galaxy on 21 January 2014. In 2014, in studying M82, scientists discovered the brightest pulsar yet known, designated M82 X-2.
NGC 4725 is an intermediate barred spiral galaxy with a prominent ring structure, located in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices near the north galactic pole. It was discovered by German-born British astronomer William Herschel on April 6, 1785. The galaxy lies at a distance of approximately 40 megalight-years from the Milky Way. NGC 4725 is the brightest member of the Coma I Group of the Coma-Sculptor Cloud, although it is relatively isolated from the other members of this group. This galaxy is strongly disturbed and is interacting with neighboring spiral galaxy NGC 4747, with its spiral arms showing indications of warping. The pair have an angular separation of 24′, which corresponds to a projected linear separation of 370 kly. A tidal plume extends from NGC 4747 toward NGC 4725.
Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope for NASA's Explorer program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission. It was launched on 18 April 2018, atop a Falcon 9 launch vehicle and was placed into a highly elliptical 13.70-day orbit around the Earth. The first light image from TESS was taken on 7 August 2018, and released publicly on 17 September 2018.
Swift J164449.3+573451, initially referred to as GRB 110328A, and sometimes abbreviated to Sw J1644+57, was a tidal disruption event (TDE), the destruction of a star by a supermassive black hole. It was first detected by the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission on March 28, 2011. The event occurred in the center of a small galaxy in the Draco constellation, about 3.8 billion light-years away. It was the first confirmed jetted tidal disruption event and is the most luminous and energetic TDE recorded.
ULTRASAT is a space telescope in a smallsat format with a large field of view, 210 square degrees, that will detect and monitor transient astronomical events in the near-ultraviolet (220–280 nm) spectral region. ULTRASAT will observe a large patch of sky, alternating every six months between the southern and northern hemisphere. The satellite will be launched into geosynchronous orbit in early 2026. All ULTRASAT data will be transmitted to the ground in real time. Upon detection of a transient event, ULTRASAT will provide alerts within 20 minutes to other ground-based and space telescopes to be directed to the source for further observation of the event in other wavelength bands.
A tidal disruption event (TDE) is a transient astronomical source produced when a star passes so close to a supermassive black hole (SMBH) that it is pulled apart by the black hole's tidal force. The star undergoes spaghettification, producing a tidal stream of material that loops around the black hole. Some portion of the stellar material is captured into orbit, forming an accretion disk around the black hole, which emits electromagnetic radiation. In a small fraction of TDEs, a relativistic jet is also produced. As the material in the disk is gradually consumed by the black hole, the TDE fades over several months or years.
ASASSN-15lh is an extremely luminous astronomical transient event discovered by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN), with the appearance of a superluminous supernova event. It was first detected on June 14, 2015, located within a faint galaxy in the southern constellation Indus, and was the most luminous supernova-like object ever observed. At its peak, ASASSN-15lh was 570 billion times brighter than the Sun, and 20 times brighter than the combined light emitted by the Milky Way Galaxy. The emitted energy was exceeded by PS1-10adi.
The All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) is an automated program to search for new supernovae and other astronomical transients, headed by astronomers from the Ohio State University, including Christopher Kochanek and Krzysztof Stanek. It has 20 robotic telescopes in both the northern and southern hemispheres. It can survey the entire sky approximately once every day.
The Zwicky Transient Facility is a wide-field sky astronomical survey using a new camera attached to the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California, United States. Commissioned in 2018, it supersedes the (Intermediate) Palomar Transient Factory (2009–2017) that used the same observatory code. It is named after the astronomer Fritz Zwicky.
PS1-10adi is an unusual kind of highly energetic optical transient discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey on 15 August 2010. The explosion or transient event emitted 2.3×1052 ergs (2.3×1045 Joules), exceeding ASASSN-15lh. It may be a superluminous supernova or a stellar disruption event. The magnitude of the explosion challenges the limits of the current models for theoretical physics.
V906 Carinae, also known as Nova Carinae 2018, was a nova in the Milky Way galaxy which appeared in the constellation Carina, near the 5th magnitude star HD 92063. It was discovered on images taken on 20.32 March 2018 by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN] telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The ASAS-SN group assigned the name ASASSN-18fv to the object. The discovery image was saturated, allowing researchers to determine only that the object was brighter than apparent magnitude 10. An earlier image obtained by ASAS-SN on 26.32 March 2018 showed the nova was a magnitude ~10.4 object at that time, and the object was not detected on ASAS-SN images taken on 15.34 March 2018 and earlier.
Lunar Ultraviolet Cosmic Imager (LUCI) is a small planned telescope that will be landed on the Moon to scan the sky in near UV wavelengths. It is a technology demonstrator developed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and it was planned to be one of several small payloads to be deployed by the commercial Z-01 lander developed by TeamIndus in partnership with OrbitBeyond. The mission was planned to be launched in 2020 as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). On 29 July 2019 OrbitBeyond announced that it would drop out of the CLPS contract with NASA, meaning that the 2020 launch was canceled and it is unknown whether the mission will ever take place.
SN 2018cow was a very powerful astronomical explosion, 10–100 times brighter than a normal supernova, spatially coincident with galaxy CGCG 137-068, approximately 200 million ly (60 million pc) distant in the Hercules constellation. It was discovered on 16 June 2018 by the ATLAS-HKO telescope, and had generated significant interest among astronomers throughout the world. Later, on 10 July 2018, and after AT 2018cow had significantly faded, astronomers, based on follow-up studies with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), formally described AT 2018cow as SN 2018cow, a type Ib supernova, showing an "unprecedented spectrum for a supernova of this class"; although others, mostly at first but also more recently, have referred to it as a type Ic-BL supernova. An explanation to help better understand the unique features of AT 2018cow has been presented. AT2018cow is one of the few reported Fast Blue Optical Transients (FBOTs) observed in the Universe. In May 2020, however, a much more powerful FBOT than AT 2018cow was reportedly observed.
NGC 545 is a lenticular galaxy located in the constellation Cetus. It is located at a distance of about 250 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 545 is about 180,000 light years across. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 1, 1785. It is a member of the Abell 194 galaxy cluster and is included along with NGC 547 in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
AT2019qiz is a tidal disruption event (TDE) that occurred at a distance of 215 millions light years (65 megaparsec), from Earth. It is the nearest TDE discovered to date. It was discovered in September 2019 by observations in ultraviolet, optical, X-ray and radio wavelengths made at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) situated in Chile and was presented in October 2020 by research published in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It involves a star with a sun-like mass and a black hole with a mass of around 106 solar masses. The TDE appears very young and increasing in brightness. The encounter tore away half of the mass of the star and threw debris at a speed of 10,000 km/s, comparable to that observed in supernova explosions.
PSR J0952–0607 is a massive millisecond pulsar in a binary system, located between 3,200–5,700 light-years (970–1,740 pc) from Earth in the constellation Sextans. It holds the record for being the most massive neutron star known as of 2022, with a mass 2.35±0.17 times that of the Sun—potentially close to the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff mass upper limit for neutron stars. The pulsar rotates at a frequency of 707 Hz, making it the second-fastest-spinning pulsar known, and the fastest-spinning pulsar known within the Milky Way.
AT2018hyz is a tidal disruption event (TDE) that was discovered in 2018 by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASASS-SN).
References
- 1 2 3 "AT 2019ahk". Transient Name Server.
- ↑ Holoien, Thomas W.-S.; Vallely, Patrick J.; Auchettl, Katie; Stanek, K. Z.; Kochanek, Christopher S.; French, K. Decker; Prieto, Jose L.; Shappee, Benjamin J.; Brown, Jonathan S.; Fausnaugh, Michael M.; Dong, Subo; Thompson, Todd A.; Bose, Subhash; Neustadt, Jack M. M.; Cacella, P.; Brimacombe, J.; Kendurkar, Malhar R.; Beaton, Rachael L.; Boutsia, Konstantina; Chomiuk, Laura; Connor, Thomas; Morrell, Nidia; Newman, Andrew B.; Rudie, Gwen C.; Shishkovsky, Laura; Strader, Jay (2019). "Discovery and Early Evolution of ASASSN-19bt, the First TDE Detected by TESS". The Astrophysical Journal. 883 (2): 111. arXiv: 1904.09293 . Bibcode:2019ApJ...883..111H. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab3c66 . S2CID 128307681.
- 1 2 Garner, Rob (2019-09-25). "TESS Spots Its 1st Star-shredding Black Hole". NASA. Retrieved 2019-09-28.
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