Astro-COLIBRI

Complete Guide to WordPress Transients

The fast X-ray transient EP240315a: a z ~ 5 gamma-ray burst in a Lyman continuum leaking galaxy

The nature of the minute-to-hour long Fast X-ray Transients (FXTs) localised by telescopes such as Chandra, Swift, and XMM-Newton remains mysterious, with numerous models suggested for the events. Here, we report multi-wavelength observations of EP240315a, a 1600 s long transient detected by the Einstein Probe, showing it to have a redshift of z=4.859. We measure a low column density of neutral hydrogen, indicating that the event is embedded in a low-density environment, further supported by direct detection of leaking ionising Lyman-continuum. The observed properties are consistent with EP240315a being a long-duration gamma-ray burst, and these observations support an interpretation in which a significant fraction of the FXT population are lower-luminosity examples of similar events. Such transients are detectable at high redshifts by the Einstein Probe and, in the (near) future, out to even larger distances by SVOM, THESEUS, and Athena, providing samples of events into the epoch of reionisation.

Die stärkste Explosion seit dem Urknall

Kosmische Rekord-Energien: Astronomen haben eine ganz neue Klasse kosmischer Mega-Explosionen entdeckt – sie sind stärker als alles jemals im Weltall

Sternengeschichten: Verschwundene Sterne

Zwischen 1950 und 2020 verschwanden tausende Sterne. Das VASCO-Projekt erforscht dieses Rätsel durch den Vergleich von Himmelsaufnahmen

The Wow! Signal Deciphered. It Was Hydrogen All Along.

The mysterious Wow! Signal shocked astronomers when it was detected in 1977. Scientists may have finally figure out what it was.

Acoustics researchers decompose sound accurately into its three basic components

Researchers have been looking for ways to decompose sound into its basic ingredients for more than 200 years. In the 1820s, French scientist Joseph Fourier proposed that any signal, including sounds, can be built using a sufficient number of sine waves. These waves sound like whistles, each have their own frequency, level and start time, and are the basic building blocks of sound.