Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950.

Autor: Villarroel B; Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Roslagstullsbacken 23, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden. beatriz.villarroel@su.se.; Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Avda Vía Láctea S/N, La Laguna, 38205, Tenerife, Spain. beatriz.villarroel@su.se., Marcy GW; Center for Space Laser Awareness, 3388 Petaluma Hill Rd, Santa Rosa, CA, 95404, USA., Geier S; Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Avda Vía Láctea S/N, La Laguna, 38205, Tenerife, Spain.; Gran Telescopio Canarias (GRANTECAN), Cuesta de San José s/n, 38712, Breña Baja, La Palma, Spain., Streblyanska A; Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Avda Vía Láctea S/N, La Laguna, 38205, Tenerife, Spain.; Gran Telescopio Canarias (GRANTECAN), Cuesta de San José s/n, 38712, Breña Baja, La Palma, Spain., Solano E; Departamento de Astrofísica, Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC/INTA), PO Box 78, 28691, Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain.; Spanish Virtual Observatory, Madrid, Spain., Andruk VN; Main Astronomical Observatory of the NAS of Ukraine, 27, Akademika Zabolotnoho St., Kyiv, 03143, Ukraine., Shultz ME; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Delaware, USA., Gupta AC; Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Manora Peak, Nainital, 263 002, India., Mattsson L; Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Roslagstullsbacken 23, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Scientific reports [Sci Rep] 2021 Jun 17; Vol. 11 (1), pp. 12794. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Jun 17.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-92162-7
Abstrakt: Nine point sources appeared within half an hour on a region within [Formula: see text] 10 arcmin of a red-sensitive photographic plate taken in April 1950 as part of the historic Palomar Sky Survey. All nine sources are absent on both previous and later photographic images, and absent in modern surveys with CCD detectors which go several magnitudes deeper. We present deep CCD images with the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias, reaching brightness [Formula: see text] mag, that reveal possible optical counterparts, although these counterparts could equally well be just chance projections. The incidence of transients in the investigated photographic plate is far higher than expected from known detection rates of optical counterparts to e.g. flaring dwarf stars, Fast Radio Bursts, Gamma Ray Bursts or microlensing events. One possible explanation is that the plates have been subjected to an unknown type of contamination producing mainly point sources with of varying intensities along with some mechanism of concentration within a radius of [Formula: see text] 10 arcmin on the plate. If contamination as an explanation can be fully excluded, another possibility is fast (t [Formula: see text] s) solar reflections from objects near geosynchronous orbits. An alternative route to confirm the latter scenario is by looking for images from the First Palomar Sky Survey where multiple transients follow a line.
Databáze: MEDLINE
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