Re: Weird, unexplained flash in sky

Dave Typinski wrote:
This almost three years old; but, does anyone have a link to more info
on this?

Maybe someone just graduated to Kardashev Type II...

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/bright-flash.html

Bright Flash in Heavens Has No Earthly Explanation
By Clara Moskowitz
January 06, 2009

File this one under: Things that go flash in the night.

While conducting a routine search for distant supernovae, astronomers
observed a bright burst of light that they can’t account for. On Feb.
21, 2006, the Hubble Space Telescope first imaged the source of light,
which continued to brighten over the next 100 days, peaked, and then
finally faded to oblivion over another 100 days.

The time scale of brightening, as well as the particular
characteristics of the colors of light seen, do not match any known
astronomical phenomena.

"So far it’s unlike anything previously observed," said Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory astronomer Kyle Barbary during a press
briefing Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long
Beach, California.

While supernovae normally take three weeks to reach their peak
brightness (or at most 70 days), this object, called SCP 06F6, took
significantly longer. During the span that the light was visible, the
team observed it with not only Hubble, but also with the Very Large
Telescope in Chile and the Subaru Telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory
in Hawaii.



See: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.1648v1

"The absence of similar spectra in the SDSS database
implies that such variables are either very rare or typically
fainter than the SDSS detection threshold, or both.
If they are typically faint, this would seem to argue for an
extragalactic origin, though a galactic origin is of course
still possible. If this transient does indeed represent a
new class of either galactic or extragalactic transients,
such objects will be of great interest for future extensive
surveys of the time-variable sky".


These kinds of mysteries often lead to new understanding!

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