An extremely luminous panchromatic outburst from the nucleus of a distant galaxy

A. J. Levan (1) , N. R. Tanvir (2) , S. B. Cenko (3) , D.A. Perley (3) , K. Wiersema (2) , J. S. Bloom (3) , A. S. Fruchter (4) , A. de Ugarte Postigo (5) , P. T. O'Brien (2) , N. Butler (3) , A. J. van Der Horst , G. Leloudas (5) , A. N. Morgan (3) , K. Misra (4) , G. C. Bower (3) , J. Farihi (2) , R. L. Tunnicliffe (1) , M. Modjaz , J. M. Silverman (3) , J. Hjorth (5) , C. Thöne (6) , A. Cucchiara (3) , J. M. Castro Cerón , A. J. Castro-Tirado (6) , J.A. Arnold (7) , M. Bremer , J. P. Brodie (7) , T. Carroll , M. C. Cooper , P. A. Curran (8) , R. M. Cutri , J. Ehle , D. Forbes , J. Fynbo , J. Gorosabel (6) , J. Graham (9) , D. I. Hoffman (10) , S. Guziy (6) , P. Jakobsson (11) , A. Kamble (12) , T. Kerr (13) , M. M. Kasliwal (10) , C. Kouveliotou , D. Kocesvki (7) , N. M. Law , P. E. Nugent , E. O. Ofek , D. Poznanski , R. M. Quimby (10) , E. Rol , A. J. Romanowsky (7) , R. Sánchez-Ramírez (6) , S. Schulze , N. Singh (14) , L. van Spaandonk , R. L. C. Starling (2) , R. G. Strom , J. C. Tello , O. Vaduvescu , P. J. Wheatley (1) , R. A. M. J. Wijers , J.M. Winters , D. Xu

1 Department of Physics [Coventry]
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Leicester]
3 Department of Astronomy [Berkeley]
4 STSci - Space Telescope Science Institute
5 DARK - Dark Cosmology Centre
6 IAA - Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
7 UCO/Lick Observatory
8 AIM (UMR_7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112) - Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation
9 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
10 Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics
11 University of Iceland [Reykjavik]
12 University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
13 JAC - Joint Astronomy Center
14 UCO/Lick Observatory

Variable x-ray and γ-ray emission is characteristic of the most extreme physical processes in the universe. We present multiwavelength observations of a unique γ-ray-selected transient detected by the Swift satellite, accompanied by bright emission across the electromagnetic spectrum, and whose properties are unlike any previously observed source. We pinpoint the event to the center of a small, star-forming galaxy at redshift z = 0.3534. Its high-energy emission has lasted much longer than any γ-ray burst, whereas its peak luminosity was ∼100 times higher than bright active galactic nuclei. The association of the outburst with the center of its host galaxy suggests that this phenomenon has its origin in a rare mechanism involving the massive black hole in the nucleus of that galaxy

Domains: Physics [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

A. J. Levan, N. R. Tanvir, S. B. Cenko, D.A. Perley, K. Wiersema, et al.. An extremely luminous panchromatic outburst from the nucleus of a distant galaxy. Science, 2011, 333 (6039), pp.199-202. ⟨10.1126/science.1207143⟩. ⟨cea-00864242⟩