Erreur d’identité cosmique : “Supernova” est en fait quelque chose de beaucoup plus rare.

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Supermassive Black Hole Pulls a Stream of Gas off Star

Un trou noir supermassif arrache un courant de gaz à une étoile

Dans un cas d’erreur d’identité cosmique, une équipe internationale d’astronomes a révélé que ce qu’ils pensaient être une supernova est en fait une éruption périodique provenant d’une galaxie où un trou noir supermassif black hole gives off bursts of energy every 114 days as it tears off chunks of an orbiting star.

Six years after its initial discovery—reported in The Astronomer’s Telegram by Carnegie’s Thomas Holoien—the researchers, led by Anna Payne of University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, can now say that the phenomenon they observed, called ASASSN-14ko, is a periodically recurring flare from the center of a galaxy more than 570 million light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor.

Their findings—based on 20 instances of regular outbursts—were published in The Astrophysical Journal and presented by Payne at the American Astronomical Society’s annual meeting.

Monster Black Hole Siphons Gas off Orbiting Giant Star

A monster black hole siphons gas off of an orbiting giant star in this illustration. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR)

Active galaxies, such as the host of ASASSN-14ko, have unusually bright and variable centers. These objects produce much more energy than the combined contribution of all their stars. Astrophysicists think this is due to gravitational and frictional forces heating up a swirling disk of gas and dust that accumulates around the central supermassive black hole. The black hole slowly consumes the material, which creates low-level, random changes in the light emitted by the disk.

This is the first unambiguous example of such clockwork behavior from an active galaxy. Periodically recurring flares, such as those from ASASSN-14ko, could be evidence of observationally elusive cosmic phenomena that have been previously predicted by theorists.

“Knowing the schedule of this extragalactic Old Faithful allows us to coordinate and study it in more detail,” Payne said.


Regardez comment un trou noir monstre consomme partiellement une étoile géante en orbite. Dans cette illustration, le gaz arraché à l’étoile entre en collision avec le disque de débris du trou noir et provoque une éruption. Les astronomes ont nommé cet événement répétitif ASASSN-14ko. Ces éruptions sont les plus prévisibles et les plus fréquentes jamais observées dans une galaxie active. Crédit : ;” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{” attribute=””>NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

ASASSN-14ko was first detected by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), a global network of 20 robotic telescopes headquartered at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. When Payne examined all the ASAS-SN data on the phenomenon, she noticed a series of 17 regularly spaced flares.

Based on this discovery, the astronomers predicted that the galaxy would experience another burst on May 17 of last year and coordinated ground- and space-based facilities to make observations. They have since successfully predicted and witnessed flares on September 7 and December 26.

“ASAS-SN is designed to probe the physics of our universe by looking for transient and variable events.” Holoien said. “It’s exciting that the luminous object we originally thought was a violent supernova explosion—which would be interesting in its own right, but more commonplace—turned out to be a long-sought-after cosmic event.”

For more on this discovery, see NASA Investigates an “Old Faithful” Active Galaxy That Erupts Every 114 Days.

Reference: “ASASSN-14ko is a Periodic Nuclear Transient in ESO 253-G003” by Anna V. Payne, Benjamin J. Shappee, Jason T. Hinkle, Patrick J. Vallely, Christopher S. Kochanek, Thomas W.-S. Holoien, Katie Auchettl, K. Z. Stanek, Todd A. Thompson, Jack M. M. Neustadt, Michael A. Tucker, James D. Armstrong, Joseph Brimacombe, Paulo Cacella, Robert Cornect, Larry Denneau, Michael M. Fausnaugh, Heather Flewelling, Dirk Grupe, A.N. Heinze, Laura A. Lopez, Berto Monard, Jose L. Prieto, Adam C. Schneider, Scott S. Sheppard, John L. Tonry and Henry Weiland, 5 April 2021, The Astrophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abe38d

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