CXC: Mysterious Cosmic Explosion Puzzles Astronomers

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CXC: Mysterious Cosmic Explosion Puzzles Astronomers

Post by bystander » Thu Mar 30, 2017 7:50 pm

CDF-S XT1: Mysterious Cosmic Explosion Puzzles Astronomers
NASA | MSFC | SAO | Chandra X-ray Observatory | 2017 Mar 30

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Universidad Católica de Chile/F.E.Bauer et al.
Scientists have discovered a mysterious flash of X-rays using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, in the deepest X-ray image ever obtained, as reported in our latest press release. The X-ray source is located in a region of the sky known as the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S), which is shown in the main panel of this graphic. Over the 17 years Chandra has been operating, the telescope has observed this field many times, resulting in a total exposure time of 7 million seconds, equal to two and a half months. In this CDF-S image, the colors represent different bands of X-ray energy, where red, green, and blue show the low, medium, and high-energy X-rays that Chandra can detect.

The mysterious source that scientists discovered, shown in the inset box, has remarkable properties. Prior to October 2014, this source was not detected in X-rays, but then it erupted and became at least a factor of 1,000 brighter in a few hours. After about a day, the source had faded completely below the sensitivity of Chandra.

Thousands of hours of legacy data from the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes helped determine that the event came from a faint, small galaxy about 10.7 billion light years from Earth. For a few minutes, the X-ray source produced a thousand times more energy than all the stars in this galaxy.

While scientists think this source likely comes from some sort of destructive event, its properties do not match any known phenomenon. This means this source may be of a variety that scientists have never seen before. ...

Mysterious Cosmic Explosion Puzzles Astronomers
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe | 2017 Mar 31

A New, Faint Population of X-ray Transients - Franz E. Bauer et al
Last edited by bystander on Mon Apr 03, 2017 3:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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