{"id":133765,"date":"2021-01-13T10:57:53","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T20:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=133765"},"modified":"2021-01-13T10:57:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T20:57:53","slug":"ifa-active-galaxy-discovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2021\/01\/13\/ifa-active-galaxy-discovered\/","title":{"rendered":"Long-sought active galaxy discovered"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
\"star
NASA<\/abbr>-produced animation showing a giant star being slowly devoured as it orbits the galaxy’s central black hole. (Photo credit: NASA<\/abbr>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The centers of galaxies with actively feeding supermassive black holes are already astounding environments. Now, a team of researchers led by a graduate student from the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Institute for Astronomy<\/a> (IfA<\/abbr>) has found an even more interesting oddball. Feeding black holes typically increase and decrease in brightness similar to the Kīlauea volcano on Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Island, becoming more or less active over time in unpredictable ways. However, the newly discovered black hole is more like Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park, erupting repeatedly at predictable times.<\/p>\n

Astronomers classify galaxies with unusually bright and variable centers as active galaxies. The active centers can produce much more energy than the combined contribution of all the stars in the host galaxy. The excess energy can be seen at visible, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. Astrophysicists think the extra emission comes from near the galaxy\u2019s central supermassive black hole, where a swirling disk of gas and dust accumulates and heats up because of gravitational and frictional forces. The black hole slowly consumes the material, which usually creates low-level, random changes in the disk\u2019s emitted light.<\/p>\n

Flaring galaxy<\/h2>\n

However, a repeatedly flaring galaxy was first detected in 2014 by the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN<\/abbr>) 14-cm telescope at Haleakalā Observatory<\/a> on Maui. Headquartered at Ohio State University, ASAS-SN<\/abbr> scans the entire sky every night using telescopes around the world, looking for exploding stars, stellar flares and comets. The galaxy, ESO<\/abbr> 253-3, is a known active galaxy more than 570 million light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor. At the time, astronomers thought the outburst was most likely a supernova<\/a>, a one-time event that destroys a star.<\/p>\n

The periodic flares then went undetected until 2020 when NASA<\/abbr> Graduate Fellow<\/a> Anna Payne<\/strong> at IfA<\/abbr> discovered them in the ASAS-SN<\/abbr> data as part of her doctoral thesis studying active galactic nuclei. She found that the center of the galaxy ESO<\/abbr> 253-3 periodically emits a bright flare, every 114 days. Periodic flares in active galaxies have been sought previously but never before been detected this unambiguously and found to occur so often.<\/p>\n

“This is the first clear example of recurring multiwavelength flares from a galaxy\u2019s core that happen this frequently,” said Payne.<\/p>\n

Led by the UH<\/abbr> team, an international group of astronomers used several other observatories to further reveal the complexity of these flares. Their study combined data from ASAS-SN<\/abbr>, UH<\/abbr>\u2019s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System<\/a>, NASA<\/abbr>\u2019s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, NASA<\/abbr>\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, the Las Cumbres Observatory (including telescopes at Haleakalā Observatory) and amateur astronomers from around the world. Payne\u2019s analysis found that the flares happen not only in the visible wavelengths, but also at higher energy X-ray and ultraviolet wavelengths.<\/p>\n

For more information see IfA<\/abbr>\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The newly discovered black hole is more like Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park, erupting repeatedly at predictable times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,35,1363,9],"class_list":["post-133765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-manoa-research","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133765"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133849,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133765\/revisions\/133849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}