Astronomers have watched as a supermassive black hole enjoying a stellar meal flashed twice in a rare and powerful event.
This double-flash Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) could result from the black hole catching binary stars, allowing one to escape and then devouring the other. If so, further observation of this event, designated ASASSN-22ci, could solve the mystery of repeating TDEs.
TDEs are so powerful that they can be seen from billions of light-years away. What isn’t common, however, is to see a TDE explode twice or more times. This makes ASASSN-22ci — the result of a feeding supermassive black hole located relatively close to Earth at around 408 million light-years away in the heart of the galaxy WISEA J122045.05+493304.7 — a rare and important event indeed.
“Only a handful of TDEs have shown multiple flares to date. Recent estimates suggest the rate of these events may be around 15 to 20 times less common than typical TDEs,” team leader and University of Hawaii astronomer Jason Hinkle told Space.com. “While these events may be rare, they have the potential to make an outsized impact on our understanding of TDE physics by allowing us to study the earliest phases of TDEs in unprecedented detail.”
A black hole with twice the flare
The first flash of ASASSN-22ci was detected in February 2022 by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN). At first, it appeared to be an average “run-of-the-mill” TDE (if a black hole snacking on a star could ever be described as run-of-the-mill, that is!).
However, 720 days later, while Hinkle and collaborators were following up on this event with ASAS-SN, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), and the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), ASASSN-22ci surprised them by flaring yet again.
Ironically, what makes ASASSN-22ci unique among repeating TDESs is just how “normal” it appears to be.
“ASASSN-22ci is special because its light curve and spectra are the most ‘normal’ of the small group of TDEs to have shown multiple flares,” Hinkle said. “Additionally, both of its flares were well studied in ultraviolet and X-ray light measurements and spectroscopy, allowing us to compare the properties between the two flares robustly.”
This information gathering included determining the mass of the…
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