When a Black Hole Stops Being Hungry
10 Dec 2012, 18:42 UTC
New Observations suggest that we may have just witnessed the relativistic jet associated with the tidal disruption event Sw 1644+57 (first observed in March of 2011) turn off.Categories: Daily paper summariesTags: Radio, radio jets, supermassive black holes, tidal disruption event, X-ray(Click to read more...)
Title: Radio Monitoring of the Tidal Disruption Event Swift J164449.3+373451. II. The Relativistic Jet Shuts off and a Transition to Forward Shock X-ray/Radio Emission.
Authors: B. A. Zauderer, E. Berger, R. Margutti, G. G. Pooley, R. Sari, A. M. Soderberg, A. Brunthaler, M. F. Bietenholz
First Author’s Institution: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Figure 1: Artist's rendition of a tidal disruption event
It is a rare treat in astronomy when we can actually watch something occur in “real time” as opposed to trying to piece together objects at different stages in their evolution to form a coherent physical picture. This is one reason astronomers were so excited about the unusual transient Swift 1644+57 (Sw 1644+57) , which went off in March of 2011. This object was discussed in several astrobites at the time (see here and here) but as a brief review: Sw 1644+57 was first detected with the Swift Gamma-Ray telescope on March 28th 2011, and ...
