![]() These snapshots allowed the team to create a precise timeline of a flare that began on Nov. During the mission’s first two years, the cameras collected a full sector image every 30 minutes. ![]() ![]() TESS observes swaths of the sky called sectors for about a month at a time. The researchers also used TESS data for a detailed look at a previous flare. The team has since predicted and observed subsequent flares on Sept. Payne and her colleagues predicted that the galaxy would flare again on May 17, 2020, so they coordinated joint observations with ground- and space-based facilities, including multiwavelength measurements with Swift. Each flare reaches its peak brightness in about five days, then steadily dims. Looking at the ESO 253-3 light curve, or the graph of its brightness over time, she immediately noticed a series of evenly spaced flares – a total of 17, all separated by about 114 days. Six years later, Payne was examining ASAS-SN data on known active galaxies as part of her thesis work. At the time, astronomers thought the outburst was most likely a supernova, a one-time event that destroys a star.Ĭredit: Michael Tucker (University of Hawai’i) and the AMUSING survey It occurred in ESO 253-3, an active galaxy over 570 million light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor. 14, 2014, by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), a global network of 20 robotic telescopes headquartered at Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. “This result is a real tour de force of multiwavelength observational astronomy.”ĪSASSN-14ko was first detected on Nov. “ASASSN-14ko is currently our best example of periodic variability in an active galaxy, despite decades of other claims, because the timing of its flares is very consistent over the six years of data Anna and her team analyzed,” said Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who studies black holes but was not involved in the research. The black hole slowly consumes the material, which creates random fluctuations in the disk’s emitted light.īut astronomers are interested in finding active galaxies with flares that happen at regular intervals, which might help them identify and study new phenomena and events. Astrophysicists think the extra emission comes from near the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, where a swirling disk of gas and dust accumulates and heats up because of gravitational and frictional forces. These objects can produce much more energy than the combined contribution of all their stars, including higher-than-expected levels of visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterĪstronomers classify galaxies with unusually bright and variable centers as active galaxies. Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. The flares are the most predictable and frequent yet seen from an active galaxy. Astronomers have named this repeating event ASASSN-14ko. In this illustration, the gas pulled from the star collides with the black hole’s debris disk and causes a flare. Watch as a monster black hole partially consumes an orbiting giant star. A paper on the source and these observations, led by Payne, is undergoing scientific review. 12, at the virtual 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Payne presented the findings on Tuesday, Jan. “We think a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center creates the bursts as it partially consumes an orbiting giant star.” “These are the most predictable and frequent recurring multiwavelength flares we’ve seen from a galaxy’s core, and they give us a unique opportunity to study this extragalactic Old Faithful in detail,” said Anna Payne, a NASA Graduate Fellow at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. By using them collaboratively, scientists obtained more detailed pictures of the outbursts. These various telescopes and instruments are sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Using data from facilities including NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the scientists have studied 20 repeated outbursts of an event called ASASSN-14ko. Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered a cosmic equivalent, a distant galaxy that erupts roughly every 114 days. During a typical year, over a million people visit Yellowstone National Park, where the Old Faithful geyser regularly blasts a jet of boiling water high in the air.
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