Astronomer here! I was a coauthor on this discovery and got extensively quoted in the piece, so AMA I guess!
TL;DR version is my collaborator discovered a black hole that shredded a star (called a [Tidal Disruption Event (TDE)](https://www.astronomy.com/science/how-do-black-holes-swallow-stars/)) that was initially misclassified as a supernova and occurred about 9 billion light years away, well beyond where we normally see these things. It looks like it was insanely bright like this thanks to a star 9x the mass of our star getting shredded, which is many times bigger than what we have seen before in terms of stellar mass.
Caitliente on
It still hurts my brain that we can see events that happened 9 billion years ago. Factor in that this event happened over the course of a few hours, a fraction of an astronomical blink, and someone watched it happen from across the universe. Truly mind blowing. Â
Sorry, I don’t have much else to contribute other than admiration. Thank you for the work you do!Â
GXWT on
Interesting find!
Why was it initially mistaken for a supernova – are the spectral/temporal properties similar in each case?
3 Comments
Astronomer here! I was a coauthor on this discovery and got extensively quoted in the piece, so AMA I guess!
TL;DR version is my collaborator discovered a black hole that shredded a star (called a [Tidal Disruption Event (TDE)](https://www.astronomy.com/science/how-do-black-holes-swallow-stars/)) that was initially misclassified as a supernova and occurred about 9 billion light years away, well beyond where we normally see these things. It looks like it was insanely bright like this thanks to a star 9x the mass of our star getting shredded, which is many times bigger than what we have seen before in terms of stellar mass.
It still hurts my brain that we can see events that happened 9 billion years ago. Factor in that this event happened over the course of a few hours, a fraction of an astronomical blink, and someone watched it happen from across the universe. Truly mind blowing. Â
Sorry, I don’t have much else to contribute other than admiration. Thank you for the work you do!Â
Interesting find!
Why was it initially mistaken for a supernova – are the spectral/temporal properties similar in each case?
And why does this AGN not have relativistic jets?