An Extremely Luminous Panchromatic Outburst from the Nucleus of a Distant Galaxy

An Extremely Luminous Panchromatic Outburst from the Nucleus of a Distant Galaxy

Variable x-ray and g-ray emission is characteristic of the most extreme physical processes inthe universe. We present multiwavelength observations of a unique g-ray–selected transientdetected by the Swift satellite, accompanied by bright emission across the electromagneticspectrum, and whose propert...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Levan, A., Tanvir, N., Cenko, S., Perley, D., Wiersema, K., Bloom, J., Fruchter, A., de Ugarte Postigo, A., O’Brien, P., Butler, N., van der Horst, A., Leloudas, G., Morgan, A., Misra, K., Bower, G., Farihi, J., Tunnicliffe, R., Modjaz, M., Silverman, J., Hjorth, J., Thöne, C., Cucchiara, A., Castro Cerón, J., Castro-Tirado, A., Arnold, J., Bremer, M., Brodie, J., Carroll, T., Cooper, M., Curran, Peter, Cutri, R., Ehle, J., Forbes, D., Fynbo, J., Gorosabel, J., Graham, J., Hoffman, D., Guziy, S., Jakobsson, P., Kamble, A., Kerr, T., Kasliwal, M., Kouveliotou, C., Kocevski, D., Law, N., Nugent, P., Ofek, E., Poznanski, D., Quimby, R., Rol, E., Romanowsky, A., Sánchez-Ramírez, R., Schulze, S., Singh, N., van Spaandonk, L., Starling, R., Strom, R., Tello, J., Vaduvescu, O., Wheatley, P., Wijers, R., Winters, J., Xu, D.
Format: Journal Article
Published: The American Association for the Advancement of Science 2011
Online Access:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6039/199.full.pdf
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/5717
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Summary:Variable x-ray and g-ray emission is characteristic of the most extreme physical processes inthe universe. We present multiwavelength observations of a unique g-ray–selected transientdetected by the Swift satellite, accompanied by bright emission across the electromagneticspectrum, and whose properties are unlike any previously observed source. We pinpoint theevent to the center of a small, star-forming galaxy at redshift z = 0.3534. Its high-energyemission has lasted much longer than any g-ray burst, whereas its peak luminosity was~100 times higher than bright active galactic nuclei. The association of the outburst with thecenter of its host galaxy suggests that this phenomenon has its origin in a rare mechanisminvolving the massive black hole in the nucleus of that galaxy.

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