Science, Space and Technology News 2023
This is an artist’s concept of one of brightest explosions ever seen in space. Called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient , it shines intensely in blue light and evolves rapidly, reaching peak brightness and fading again in a matter of days, unlike supernovae which take weeks or months to dim. Only a handful of previous LFBOTs have been discovered since 2018. And they all happen inside galaxies where stars are being born.
One LFBOT popped up in 2023 in a place where no one expected it be – far between two galaxies. Only Hubble could exactly pinpoint its surprising location. If a flavor of extraordinarily powerful supernovae causes LFBOTs, they should blow up in the spiral arms of galaxies where star birth is underway. The massive newborn stars behind supernovae don’t live long enough to go wandering off beyond their nesting ground inside a galaxy.
LFBOTs are among the brightest known visible-light events in the universe – going off unexpectedly like camera flashbulbs. Only a handful have been found Image titled “AT2023fhn HST WFC3/UVIS” with color key, scale bar and compass arrows shows three galaxies against the velvet-black backdrop of space. The largest is the white and blue spiral-shaped galaxy at image center. Two smaller galaxies are whitish patches toward the left. A curious white spot with red pointers near the top of the image is the brilliant glow from some unknown object that exploded, but is not associated with any of the galaxies.
“The more we learn about LFBOTs, the more they surprise us,” said Chrimes. “We’ve now shown that LFBOTs can occur a long way from the center of the nearest galaxy, and the location of the Finch is not what we expect for any kind of supernova.”The Zwicky Transient Facility – an extremely wide-angle ground-based camera that scans the entire northern sky every two days – first alerted astronomers to the Finch on April 10, 2023.
“The discovery poses many more questions than it answers,” said Chrimes. “More work is needed to figure out which of the many possible explanations is the right one.”
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