Astronomers witnessed the BOAT, the brightest cosmic event ever recorded, demonstrating the power of Time-Domain and Multimessenger Astronomy. This event and others like it offer insights into the universe’s dynamic processes and the role of collaboration in scientific discovery.
Stephen Lesage’s phone started vibrating just after halftime on October 9, 2022, while he was watching a soccer game in Atlanta with a friend. When Lesage saw the incoming messages, the match no longer seemed important. There had been a rare cosmic event, and he needed to get to his computer immediately.
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Satellite and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory had spotted an unusually bright signal in space, and sent automatic alerts to scientists. Lesage’s team’s Fermi chat channel lit up with messages as scientists coordinated their follow-up strategy.
“Everyone in that group was like, ‘this thing’s crazy! Who’s on duty to analyze this? This is what we’ve been waiting for,’” Lesage, a graduate student at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, recalled. “Time to go!”
The unusual event turned out to be a cosmic burst that may have been the brightest at X-ray and gamma-ray energies since civilization began. Astronomers dubbed it the BOAT, “the brightest of all time.” Lesage led an analysis of Fermi data that demonstrated just how bright the BOAT really was. More than 150 telescopes in space and on Earth followed up to get more details of the event including Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer), Hubble Space Telescope, and James Webb Space Telescope, as well as the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton telescope.
The Universe Is Changing
The BOAT is an example of what astronomers call Time-Domain and Multimessenger Astronomy. The “Time Domain” part refers to events that happen in the universe that telescopes can observe as they unfold, such as a supernova or the merger of two neutron stars. “Multimessenger Astronomy” refers to the variety of “messengers” that deliver information from the universe, including all forms of light, high-energy particles, and ripples in spacetime called Original article here. .