The students, Kinevra Zakagnini and Jackson Code, worked with Ravi from 2018 to 2019, and by comparing radio observations over several years, they found that an object J1533 + 2727 was much brighter in the mid-1990s, but that it had diminished considerably. 2017.
As detectives found new clues in the old case, they searched the archives of the NRAO’s Green Bank 300-foot telescope and found that in 1986 and 1987 the object was still bright (the Green Bank telescope collapsed on each other in 1988). Since its peak in the mid-1980s, the brightness of the J1533 + 2727 has been reduced 500-fold.
Taken together, including the VLA’s new observations, the researchers believe the new TDE occurred when a giant black hole in the center of a galaxy 500 million light years away crushed a star and then ejected a jet. The speed of light.
This is called a relative jet, and there are three TDEs associated with such jets so far. However, they have been found in galaxies 10 times farther away.
“This is the first discovery of a relative TDE candidate in a relatively nearby universe, which shows that these radio TDEs may be more common than we previously thought,” Ravi said.