Astronomers have spotted an event 10 times brighter than any known exploding star or supernova that they say has lasted for nearly three years.
The sky gazers say that the cosmic explosion, named AT20211wx, is still being detected by telescopes despite occurring nearly 8 billion light-years away from Earth. The universe where the explosion occurred is also believed to be upwards of 6 billion years old, astronomers shared.
The team of astronomers studying the space explosion published their findings in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Researchers shared that the luminosity of the explosion is also three times brighter than tidal disruptions — an event where stars fall into black holes and expel large amounts of light.
While the event has been visible from Earth for some time, astronomers shared that they now believe the cosmic explosion occurred when a supermassive black hole disrupted a vast gas or dust cloud that was potentially thousands of times larger than our sun.
Their findings suggest that the cloud was drawn off the course of its orbit and went flying into the black hole, which then swallowed pieces of the hydrogen cloud. Astronomers say that as the cloud was eaten, shock waves likely reverberated through its remnants and into the swirling mass of material that orbits the black hole, creating the light event.
Dr. Philip Wiseman, the lead author of the study, shared in a statement that his team happened upon AT20211wx by chance in November 2020, saying, “It was flagged by our search algorithm when we were searching for a type of supernova.”
“Most supernovae and tidal disruption events only last for a couple of months before fading away,” Wiseman said. “For something to be bright for two plus years was immediately very unusual.”
Conducting follow-up observations of the event, researchers were able to determine its distance from Earth by analyzing wavelengths of light used to observe it. Study co-author Sebastian Hönig, a professor at the University of Southampton, shared that this was the last piece of evidence needed to determine the brightness of the explosion.
“Once you know the distance to the object and how bright it appears to us, you can calculate the brightness of the object at its source,” Hönig said in a statement.
Now, for the last 2½ years, the explosion has been observed by astronomers every few nights using the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Hawaii, which is used to watch for objects in the sky that rapidly change in brightness.
Overall, the findings from the astronomers shared that the explosion is nearly 100 times brighter than the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy combined.
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