The unusual new blast analysed by researchers is as bright as hundreds of billions of suns, but unusually it lasts less than half as long as typical supernova
A rare and dazzling cosmic explosion, which outshines most supernovae in the universe, has been spotted by researchers at Queen’s University, Belfast.
The unusual new blast analysed by researchers is as bright as hundreds of billions of suns, but unusually it lasts less than half as long as typical supernova. In a newly published study, the researchers first identified the event using the Atlas network of robotic telescopes.
The telescopes in Hawaii, Chile and South Africa scan the entire visible sky every night to search for any object that moves or changes in brightness. Within days of detecting the explosion â named AT2022aedm â the researchers obtained more data with the New Technology Telescope in Chile and found that it looked unlike any known supernova.
Follow-up data from observatories around the world showed that the explosion faded and cooled down much faster than expected. Dr Matt Nicholl, from the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen’s, said they have been hunting for the most powerful cosmic explosions for over a decade, adding “this is one of the brightest we’ve ever seen”.