Astronomers discover a rare cosmic event that lasted 3 years
Astronomers digging through old data from Australia's ASKAP radio telescope just found something wild: a rare cosmic event called ASKAP J005512.2-255834.
This object brightened rapidly over a matter of weeks — becoming about 20 times brighter — and stayed visible for nearly three years, pretty unusual for space stuff.
The event was off-center from the galaxy's nucleus
ASKAP J005512.2-255834 showed up in a small, star-forming galaxy over 1.7 billion light-years away, but it was offset from the galaxy nucleus, i.e., off-nuclear — a location more consistent with GRB-like events and distinct from nuclear TDEs.
Even after lots of searching, scientists couldn't find any matching signals in infrared, optical, or X-ray — just this odd radio glow.
It could be a gamma-ray burst or tidal disruption event
Researchers think it might be the afterglow of a long gamma-ray burst from a collapsing star or maybe even the result of a black hole tearing apart a star off to the side of its galaxy, both super rare scenarios.