Scientists have discovered the most prredictable and frequent example of flares from an active galaxy. The galaxy in question is named ESO 253-3.
When scientists saw the first flare, coming from a star named ASASSN-14ko, they thought it was an explosion of a dying star (called a supernova), of one of the galaxy’s billions of stars. But, after looking at data from some different satellites and observatories (ASAS-SN, NuStar, XMM-newton, SWIFT, and TESS),and seeing the flares happen every 114 days, the scientists have determined that it is NOT a supernova as they previously thought, but a star on a 144-day orbit around the galaxy’s central black hole, being slowly devoured.
Every time the star gets closest to the black hole, the black hole devours 3 jupiters worth of mass, and creating the flares.
Astronomers eagerly await the next flare, and will continue studying this fascinating process.
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