Mysterious supernova has put astronomers in a stalemate, "Chronicle of world events

The cow was already observed by other telescopes.

Scientists have recorded the light of a catastrophic event in our neighborhood of the galaxy. The object looks most like a supernova, but some of its features have never been observed. The report on the discovery is published on the telegram server of the astronomer.

On June 16, as part of the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System), the Hawaiian telescope recorded a sharp increase in brightness in the galaxy CGCG 137-068. The object found, I receive an automatic title AT2018cow, allowing abbreviated astronomers to call "The Cow" (cow).

"I've never seen anything like it in this region of the Universe," said principal researcher Stephen ATLAS of the Irish Smartt University of Queens University in Belfast.

Usually supernova dial brightness gradually, and peak values ​​reached in a few weeks. However, the cow reached the maximum of only three days, and the brightness limit was ten times higher than the typical supernova. Such luminosity first led scientists to think that this event had occurred somewhere in our Galaxy, however, other spectral observations have established that the property is located at a distance of about 200 million light-years from Earth. It is not very far in cosmological terms, but much farther from our solar system.

It turned out that it emits in all wavelengths from radio to X-ray. The main difference from the regular supernova was the reach. In the spectrum of most astronomical objects, there are absorption lines badociated with the presence of the substance near the source. But the AT2018cow spectrum was remarkably "smooth". The distribution of energy over the wavelengths is mostly, but no one has been able to compare them with those commonly seen in supernovae.

The Cow had already begun to fade, and to unravel its behavior, astronomers still could not. If it was good of a supernova explosion, at this distance, it would produce significant gravitational waves. But the LIGO detectors are responsible for finding these waves, while finalizing them, so they do not work in normal mode and confirm such a hypothesis, which astronomers can not do.

"It looks like a very rare object," adds Smartt, "an observation in all the wavelength points to the rich physics of the process, which must still understand."