Overview
- AT 2024wpp, observed about 1.1 billion light-years away, is the most luminous fast blue optical transient yet and is detailed in two papers accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
- The data favor a scenario where a black hole up to roughly 100 solar masses shredded a companion star exceeding 10 solar masses, likely a Wolf–Rayet, within days.
- Researchers infer relativistic jets moving at about 40% of light speed, with radio emission produced where the jets struck surrounding gas.
- The event radiated roughly 100 times the energy of a normal supernova, effectively ruling out standard stellar explosions as the power source.
- A coordinated X-ray-to-radio campaign (including Chandra, Swift, NuSTAR, ALMA, ATCA, Keck, Lick and Gemini) underpins the findings, with upcoming UV missions such as ULTRASAT and UVEX expected to greatly expand the LFBOT sample and test this model.