A Candidate for the Biggest Boom Yet Seen:
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 January 26
Explanation: It is a candidate for the brightest and most powerful explosion ever seen --
what is it? The
flaring spot of light was found by the
All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASASSN) in June of last year and labelled
ASASSN-15lh. Located about three billion
light years distant, the source appears tremendously bright for anything so far away: roughly 200 times brighter than an average
supernova, and temporarily 20 times brighter than all of the stars in our
Milky Way Galaxy combined. Were light emitted by
ASASSN-15lh at this rate in all directions at once, it would be the most
powerful explosion yet recorded. No known stellar object was thought to create an explosion this powerful, although pushing the
theoretical limits for the spin-down of highly-magnetized neutron star -- a
magnetar -- gets close. Assuming
the flare fades as expected later this year, astronomers are planning to use telescopes including
Hubble to zoom in on the region to gain more clues. The
above-featured artist's illustration depicts a hypothetical night sky of a planet located across the host galaxy from the outburst.