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2w ago

Black Hole–Star Encounter Likely Triggered Peculiar Supernova SN 2023zkd

A CfA, MIT-led paper credits months-ahead AI detection for enabling crucial follow-up with telescopes to reveal a black hole companion’s imprint on the supernova’s light curve.

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The Zwicky Transient Facility, which scans the sky from the Palomar Observatory in Southern California, first detected the strange supernova in July 2023.
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Overview

  • The study appearing in The Astrophysical Journal argues that a close interaction or merger between a massive, helium-rich star and a black hole companion best explains SN 2023zkd’s unusual explosion.
  • The Light curve Anomaly Identification and Similarity Search (LAISS) AI tool flagged the transient months before its peak, allowing rapid, multi-instrument observations of its rise and fall.
  • Archived data show the progenitor brightened gradually over more than four years prior to detonation, an extremely rare pre-explosion signal for supernovae.
  • Photometric and spectroscopic analysis reveals a double-peaked light curve produced by the blast’s sequential collisions with low-density circumstellar gas and a denser, disk-like cloud.
  • Researchers say this event provides some of the strongest observational evidence that compact companions can trigger or reshape massive-star explosions and highlight the need for AI-driven triage ahead of the Rubin Observatory era.