Many amateur astronomers love looking up at the sky through their telescopes and observing the beauty.
Some of them are even lucky enough to see some type of rare phenomena.
Thanks to projects like NASA’s Backyard Worlds, these amateur astronomers have a way to report their findings so that professionals with higher-powered telescopes can check them out.
One such example of this is when amateur astronomers caught a glimpse of an object that was traveling extremely fast.
They thought it was unusual, and that was quickly confirmed by professionals.
After investigation, it was found that the object was traveling at more than a million miles per hour, and it is expected to jettison itself out of the Milky Way into intergalactic space at some point in the future.
So, what is the object?
Well, they aren’t 100% sure but it seems to be a small star or a brown dwarf. It is the first one of these that is moving at this type of speed that has been found.
The researchers (including the amateurs who discovered it) published a paper in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. In the paper, they said:
it is the, “first hypervelocity very low mass star or brown dwarf to be found. It may represent a broader population of very high velocity, low-mass objects that have undergone extreme accelerations.”
This raises the question of what could have caused the object to reach such incredible speeds.
There are several theories, though they do not know which one might explain this particular object.
One option is that this object was a companion star with a white dwarf that went supernova. When that occurred, this object was shot out of orbit at great speed.
Another option is that it was within a globular cluster that included two black holes. UC San Diego astronomer assistant professor Kyle Kremer explained this option:
“When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster.”
Whatever caused this object to start moving at such great speeds, it was amazing that it was seen by astronomers.
It also indicates that there are more of these objects out there, even though they are almost certainly very rare.
This just goes to show that there are many objects in the sky for amateur astronomers to find.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.