A DISTANT SUPERMASSIVE black hole is flaring in a surprisingly regular pattern, and astronomers think it betrays the piecemeal devouring of a star.
On November 14, 2014, the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), a global network of 14-cm robotic telescopes, detected a flare in the core of a misshapen galaxy 570 million light-years away.
Astronomers initially thought the flare, catalogued as ASASSN-14ko, was a supernova, or maybe the temporary brightening of a supermassive black hole. However, when Anna Payne (University of Hawai‘i, M noa) went back over six years’ worth of data, she found similar flare-ups occur every 114 days.
Payne and colleagues observed the days-long flashes with various facilities, including four large amateur telescopes in Australia, South Africa and Brazil and several X-ray satellites. Payne discussed the analysis…