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Update on the Hubble Mystery Object
Topic Started: Jun 15 2009, 08:26 PM (307 Views)
ngc1514
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Update on Hubble Mystery Object
June 7, 2009
by Rachel Courtland, NewScientist.com

Remember the Hubble Mystery Object? In 2006 it steadily brightened, then steadily faded over the course of 200 days total, in a way that resembled no known type of variable object. Even its spectrum was inscrutable, leaving no sign of whether it was a flare on a very faint star in our own Milky Way or some enormous eruption billions of light-years distant.

Now there's a sign that it was the latter. And one new theory suggests that an odd, wandering, intergalactic black hole tore apart a star of unusual composition. But that idea seems forced, leaving astronomers still at a loss to explain all the features of the strange event.

The object, called SCP 06F6, was first spotted (in Bootes) in February 2006 during a Hubble Space Telescope search for far supernovae. The object rose to its maximum brightness in about 100 days, much longer than most supernovae take (usually about 20 days or less).

Analysis of the object's spectrum in 2008 offered no more clues: SCP 06F6 seemed to resemble no known object. Later, however, examining the spectrum over coffee, Boris Gaensicke (University of Warwick, U.K.) and colleagues noticed that dips in the spectrum looked familiar; they resembled molecular carbon absorption, but not at the normal carbon wavelengths. If this identification is correct, the object's light is redshifted by about 0.14, which places it about 1.8 billion light-years away.

Gaensicke and colleagues propose two scenarios that might explain the object. In one, a carbon-rich star swung too close to an intermediate-mass or heavyweight black hole, which pulled it apart. Some of the material made its way into the black hole, and some was blasted off in a flare that was seen from Earth as SCP 06F6.

Such star-swallowing flares brighten and dim with the same leisurely pace seen in SCP 06F6, and they also produce X-rays with a similar brightness to those the team was able to find at the location of the firefly-like event.

But so far, no one has found a galaxy or even a star cluster at the same place as the object, not even down to 26th magnitude, which argues against this scenario. Black holes do occasionally get slung out of their homes in galaxies during galaxy mergers, but "It would be very contrived to have a free-floating intermediate-mass black hole that would be disrupting a free-floating star in the intergalactic medium," says Gaensicke.

Another scenario is that the event was the supernova death of a massive star that had escaped to intergalactic space and that was swaddled in a region of carbon that the star itself had previously expelled, Gaensicke says. The shock wave from the blast would vaporize and heat the carbon, producing an event that could be as prolonged as SCP 06F6.

But massive stars are also unlikely to be found on their own. They live short lives, so they shouldn't have time to escape from their home galaxies.

And, the X-rays produced by SCP 06F6 were about 50 times brighter than those produced in the most luminous supernovae studied so far.

Best match?

The carbon spectral lines "are certainly the best match to the SCP 06F6 spectrum found so far," but they're not a perfect fit, says Kyle Barbary of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author of the 2008 paper on the object's discovery. "No possibility suggested so far is conclusive," he says.

Finding another example of the Hubble Mystery Object would be the next big step in figuring out what it was, Barbary says: "SCP 06F6 was found in a relatively small survey, so it is likely that there are a lot more of them out there. I'm quite hopeful that we will be able to find out the true nature of the event in the near future."

Gaensicke hopes one of Hubble's new cameras, the Wide Field Camera 3 (installed during last month's servicing mission) can spot signs of a small host galaxy around the object that was too faint to see with other instruments.


http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/47127082.html?showAll=y&c=y



Edited by ngc1514, Jun 15 2009, 08:27 PM.
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That scientists report phenomena they don't understands leads me to trust them over creationists who know it all.

Here's a sort of related story concerning the interpretation of light signals: Search for life on distant planet gets boost:
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The method involves analysing starlight streaming through a planet's atmosphere.

Tested on the Earth, scientists found unmistakably strong signs of life in the form of chemical "fingerprints".

They believe within one or two decades the same technique could reveal life on worlds orbiting stars far beyond the Sun.

Reflected light was already known to contain valuable information about a planet's atmosphere.

But at distances of many light years the signals, from light wavelength patterns called spectra, are very faint and difficult to read.

The new technique takes a different approach by studying light passing through the atmospheric layer instead of reflected off it.

This kind of light pattern, known as a "transmission spectrum", was found to provide a much stronger signal.

Analysing the light can reveal biologically important chemicals such as oxygen and water, which indicate the presence of life.

The test was carried out during a lunar eclipse by observing moonlight passing through the Earth's atmosphere.

This was equivalent to observing the Earth's spectrum from far away as the planet passed in front of the Sun.

The astronomers used the UK-run William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

Dr Enric Palle, from the Astrophysics Institute of the Canaries, who led the research published in the journal Nature, said: "Now we know what the transmission spectrum of a inhabited planet looks like, we have a much better idea of how to find and recognise Earth-like planets outside our solar system where life may be thriving.

"The information in this spectrum shows us that this is a very effective way to gather information about the biological processes that may be taking place on a planet."

Colleague Dr Pilar Montanes-Rodriguez, from the same institute, added: "Many discoveries of Earth-size planets are expected in the next decades and some will orbit in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Obtaining their atmospheric properties will be highly challenging; the greatest reward will happen when one of those planets shows a spectrum like that of our Earth."

Professor Keith Mason, chief executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) which funds the William Herschel Telescope, said: "This new transmission spectrum is good news for future upcoming ground and space-based missions dedicated to the search for life in the universe.

"The UK is committed to cutting edge science and UK owned facilities like the WHT are helping to make many groundbreaking discoveries and expand our knowledge of the Universe. Not only do these results improve our knowledge of our own planet but we now have an effective way to search for life on the increasing number of exoplanets being found by astronomers."
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ngc1514
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One of the beauties of science is that it is not restricted to professionals. Oh, big science with multi-billion dollar apparatus pretty much locks out the amateur, but many of the new space probes and orbiting observatories are now making the raw data available to anyone and amateurs are having a field day mining the data for new discoveries.

Yes, even the creationists can learn a little science and perform many of the fundamental experiments that provided the foundation of modern science.

In regards to your posting... amateurs have detected exoplanets. Back in 2004 a Belgium amateur with a 14" Celestron detected an exoplanet.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/3309506.html

Wonder when someone will come up with observational theology...

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Science is inclusive, religion exclusive--religion requires enemies, outsiders, "them". Today's science becomes tomorrow's technology, which is accessible to most. Creation science offers little, ID even less, mostly criticism of "them". One is designed, authoritarian, the other evolves, anarchic. ;-)
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