A powerful explosion in space recorded the brightest flash

An exploding star was 100 times greater than the Sun.

A group of researchers from different countries managed to register a powerful flash, of those that are known to science. It occurred in the center of the galaxy, the remote is 2.6 billion light years from Earth.

According to the findings of researchers, it spawned the explosion of large stars. The transient (changing the brightness of the object) PS1-10adi was discovered in 2010 using the telescope Pan-STARRS at Haleakala Observatory. The brightness at 80-200 times the known brightness, astronomers supernovas. Over the next three years, the brightness gradually decreases. However, this did not prevent the source of light is brighter than the parent galaxy.

Such processes are found, as a rule, in Seyfert galaxies — varieties of star clusters with active nuclei (AGN). However, changes in the brightness of PS1-10adi was not characteristic of known classes of AGN, so researchers have proposed new mechanisms that explain the emergence of PS1-10adi.

Transient spectrum resembled that of type IIn supernovae — explosions of massive stars resulting from the collapse of massive cores. In the latter case PS1-10adi was supposed to be a hypergiant with a mass of more than a hundred times the mass of the Sun. The reason for the unprecedented brightness could be the interaction of substances of the outer shell of the star, ejected during the explosion, with a very dense interstellar environment.

paradox