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Astronomers find a new luminous fast blue optical transient cosmic explosion
Using data from the Gemini South Telescope and other observatories, astronomers have found a new luminous fast blue optical transient (LFBOT), a powerful but poorly understood type of cosmic explosion characterized by intense blue light. The LFBOT occurred in the far outskirts of a galaxy, rather than nestled in a star-forming galaxy like other LFBOTs discovered so far.
[NSF's NOIRLab is the U.S. national center for ground-based, nighttime optical astronomy.]
Learn more in the NOIRLab news story Gemini South captures cosmic 'finch'. (Date of image: 2023; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: Oct. 27, 2023)
Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani (Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)
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