Hubble finds mysterious object SCP 06F6! What is it?

by William Atkins

Monday, 15 September 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! An international team of astronomers has found an object in deep space, which they call SCP 06F6, using the Hubble Space Telescope during a Cluster Supernova Survey. Unfortunately, the object doesn’t match up to any known astronomical body ever classified before. The SCP in SCP 06F6 stands for “Supernova Cosmology Project.” In this case, SCP 06F6 is called by its discoverers as an “unusual optical transient.” They write about it in their paper “Discovery of an unusual optical transient with the Hubble Space Telescope” (pdf file). It will eventually appear in The Astrophysical Journal (being accepted on September 8, 2008). The lead author of the research is American astrophysicist Kyle Barbary, from the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley. The Hubble Space Telescope, with the use of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Wide Field Camera, first noticed the strange object on February 21, 2006 while searching in the direction of the constellation Boötes. It is called “the Bear Watcher” because it appears to be watching the constellations of Ursa Major (“Great Bear”) and Ursa Minor (“Little Bear”), specifically near the galaxy cluster CL 1432.5+3332.8. Hubble saw this mysterious object brighten for about one hundred days, peak in brightness, but then fade over the second one hundred days. It went from a brightness peak of magnitude 21 down to a magnitude of 26, changing brightness by a factor of 120 in about three months. What did the astronomers think about this mysterious object? Please read page two. << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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