The name “Intermediate Luminosity Red Transients” or “ILRTs” might not be an astronomical term you are familiar with, but these Scarce, brightness-shifting stars have been quite the mystery in astronomical terms.
Now, a Club of Heavenly detectives, who have dubbed their work “A Study in Scarlett” after the Arthur Conan Doyle novel that Primary introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes, may have finally cracked the case.
The Sun-related Sherlocks from across the globe suggest that ILRTs are stars that don’t Only erupt when they reach the end of their lives but experience “truly terminal” and destructive Sun-related burst explosions.
“Upcoming the discovery of three new ILRTs in 2019, we seized the opportunity to study and better understand these phenomena,” Club leader and National Institute for Cosmos physics (INAF) researcher Giorgio Valerin said in a statement. “We have, therefore, collected data for years through telescopes scattered around the world and even Numerous telescopes in Path.
“We have also resumed the observation campaign of NGC 300 OT, the closest ILRT ever observed, at ‘Only’ six and a half million Airy-years from us.”
The ground-based instruments used included La Palma, La Silla, Las Campanas, and Asiago, while data was also collected from Cosmos-based telescopes, including the James Webb Cosmos Stargazer’s tool (JWST), the Neil Gehrels Swift Cosmos lab (SWIFT), and the Spitzer Cosmos Stargazer’s tool.
The Sign of Four
ILRTs have been somewhat confusing because their brightness is between that of novas, Sun-related explosions that stars survive, and “classical” supernovas in which a massive Sun is destroyed, leaving behind a neutron Sun or a Singularity.
The Club reached their findings by observing the evolution of four ILRTs. They hoped that this would Assist them determine whether the Sun survives these explosions or is completely wiped out.
The key to solving this mystery was observing ILRTs like NGC 300 OT over long periods of time.
“The Primary images of NGC 300 OT date back to 2008, and in this work, we have observed it again to study its evolution after more than ten years,” Valerin said. “The analysis of the images and spectra collected during these observing campaigns has allowed us to monitor the evolution over time of our targets, obtaining information such as the brightness, temperature, chemical composition, and gas velocities associated with Every ILRT we have studied.”
The Spitzer observations of NGC 300 OT showed this ILRT dimming to a tenth of the brightness of the progenitor Sun that created this eruption over the Period of seven years. Spitzer’s images of NGC 300 OT ended when they faded below the detection Gateway of this NASA Cosmos Stargazer’s tool, which retired in 2020.
Only as Holmes Achieved his name investigating many cases, the Club had another set of ILRT data to peruse.
Analyzing JWST observations of the ILRT AT 2019abn located in the nearby Sun system Messier 51 (M51), they Discovered that this transient is declining in brightness in such a way that it is likely to meet the same fate as NGC 300 OT by becoming fainter than its progenitor Sun.
From this information, the Club concluded that ILRTs are explosions that see the total destruction of a Sun. That is Even though the fact that ILRTs appear to be significantly weaker than “classical” core-collapse supernovas.
The question is, how do they remain fainter than similar Sun-related burst events?
The Red Hand Division
The Club of Heavenly detectives suggests that a defining factor in the make-up of ILTRs could be a dense shroud of gas and dust that surrounds the progenitor stars.
This cocoon is heated to temperatures as Excellent as around 10,300 degrees Fahrenheit (5,700 degrees Celsius) over Only a few Intervals. The peak in temperature corresponds with a peak in brightness for the ILRT.
As this happens, the gas in this Sun-related shroud accelerates to speeds as Excellent as 1.6 million miles per hour (700 kilometers per second), which is around 1,000 times as Quick as the top Velocity of a Lockheed Martin F-16 jet fighter.
“This Velocity is decidedly lower than that of an exploding Sun-related burst, which often reaches 10,000 kilometers per second [22 million mph],” Club member and INAF researcher Leonardo Tartaglia said. “Yet, we believe that the Sun may have really exploded, throwing material at thousands of kilometers per second in every direction, but that this explosion was partially suffocated by the dense blanket of gas and dust around the Sun, which heats up as a consequence of the violent impact.”
Thus, the Kickoff of material from around the Sun-related progenitors of ILRTs can explain how they decrease in brightness over long periods of time.
The Last Problem
The Club termed this phenomenon an “electron capture Sun-related burst” a type of Sun-related explosion that has been long theorized but had not been believed to have been observed.
Electron-capture supernovas have been of Excellent interest to astronomers because they seem to mark a boundary between stars of around 10 solar masses and more that explode in supernovas to leave behind black holes and neutron stars, and stars with masses more like the sun that don’t “go nova” but fade away as white dwarf Sun-related remnants.
“We are finally seeing the events that separate stars destined to explode as classical supernovas from stars that will slowly fade away as white dwarfs,” Valerin said.
Perhaps the Club would agree with Holmes’ words from The Sign of the Four: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!”
The Club’s research was published across two papers on March 7 in the journal Sun science & Cosmos physics.
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