An unusually brilliant transient in the galaxy M85
Creators
-
1.
California Institute of Technology
-
2.
Pennsylvania State University
-
3.
University of California, Berkeley
-
4.
University of Arizona
-
5.
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Abstract
Historically, variable and transient sources have both surprised astronomers and provided new views of the heavens. Here we report the discovery of an optical transient in the outskirts of the lenticular galaxy Messier 85 in the Virgo cluster. With a peak absolute R magnitude of -12, this event is distinctly brighter than novae, but fainter than type Ia supernovae (which are expected in a population of old stars in lenticular galaxies). Archival images of the field do not show a luminous star at that position with an upper limit in the g filter of about -4.1 mag, so it is unlikely to be a giant eruption from a luminous blue variable star. Over a two-month period, the transient source emitted radiation energy of almost 10^47 erg and subsequently faded in the optical sky. It is similar to, but six times more luminous at peak than, an enigmatic transient in the galaxy M31 (ref. 1). A possible origin of M85 OT2006-1 is a stellar merger. If so, searches for similar events in nearby galaxies will not only allow study of the physics of hyper-Eddington sources, but also probe an important phase in the evolution of stellar binary systems.
Additional Information
© 2007 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Received 2 June 2006; accepted 30 March 2007. We thank D. Frail for discussion and constructive criticism. We also thank the astronomers who maintain the NED database at IPAC and the data archives of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Telescope. Our work has been funded in part by NASA, NSF, the Sylvia and Jim Katz Foundation and the TABASGO Foundation.Attached Files
Accepted Version - 0705.3668.pdf
Supplemental Material - nature05822-s1.pdf
Files
0705.3668.pdf
Additional details
Additional titles
- Alternative title
- An unusually brilliant transient in the galaxy Messier 85
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 55867
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150317-154247587
Related works
- Describes
- https://arxiv.org/abs/0705.3668 (URL)
Funding
- NASA
- NSF
- Sylvia and Jim Katz Foundation
- TABASGO Foundation
Dates
- Created
-
2015-03-18Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field