Fwd: Flash in Sky Baffles Experts
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Subject: Flash in Sky Baffles Experts
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September 23, 1999,
San Jose Mercury News
http://www7.mercurycenter.com:80/premium/nation/docs/bigflash23.htm
Flash in sky baffles experts
Astronomers puzzle over energy burst
WASHINGTON -- Astronomers worldwide are tracking down a mysterious and
unusual burst of energy that exploded like a flash bulb in the sky
last
week, lingered several hours and disappeared.
The sudden flash turned a star too dim to see except with a good
telescope into one almost visible to the naked eye. But the outburst
really wowed astronomers in invisible wavelengths -- X-ray, gamma ray
and radio -- where it flashed more than 120 times stronger than
normal,
to become briefly the brightest thing in the sky.
Messages flashed through cyberspace as astronomers buzzed about
something very peculiar going on. "It's become a kind of global
detective story," said American University astronomer Richard
Berendzen
Astronomer: 'Wow!'
On Sept. 15, as a storm approached in Australia, Rod Stubbings, an
amateur astronomer, snatched a glance at a star that is known to
flicker
a bit in the southern constellation Sagittarius.
"Wow! This is some outburst," Stubbings recalled via e-mail. "I closed
up the observatory, ran inside and reported the outburst."
Then the worldwide hunt started. Researchers scoured the spectrum from
long-range radio waves to very short wave X-rays and gamma rays.
Astronomers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology diverted a
NASA
X-ray telescope to take a look.
"This one came screaming out of nowhere at us," said MIT researcher
Donald Smith.
Smith enlisted the help of radio astronomers at observatories across
the
United States.
"Something really unusual is going on," said astronomer Bob Hjellming
at
the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico. "It's gotten
odder and odder as we've gotten pieces of data on it."
Gamma-ray astronomers started an independent investigation. They were
floored by what they saw.
"It's kind of like you were sitting out on your porch seeing a rabbit
going hopping across and then another and another and then a 500-pound
gorilla is going across. And you're sitting there saying, `Did this
really happen?' " said Mike McCullough, a gamma-ray scientist at the
University Space Research Association in Huntsville, Ala.
Hunt for explanation
Scientists agree the phenomenon was real, but now comes the hard part:
What was it?
The mysterious flash came from somewhere between 1,300 and 3,300
light-years away in the Milky Way, Hjellming determined. That may
sound
far away, but in astronomical terms, it's just a bit down the street
in
our own galactic neighborhood.
At first, different astronomers, looking at the outburst in their
particular field of expertise, couldn't get the whole picture, much
like
blind men describing an elephant by feeling different parts of its
body,
Hjellming said. But a theory started to jell via the Internet.
Experts' best guess -- and they say that's all it is -- is that a
super
compact object, either a black hole or neutron star, suddenly
swallowed
much of a neighboring star and shot out enormous high-energy jets.
Scientists hope to have a photo of the jets next week.
"That's really a huge part of science: finding a mystery and solving
it," McCullough said. "And that's what's going on here."