A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger – thanks to the eagle-eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger – thanks to the eagle-eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn't expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. And, the results are leaving astronomers even more confounded. To start with, they don’t know what LFBOTs are. The Hubble results suggest they know even less by ruling out some possible theories.
LFBOTs are among the brightest known visible-light events in the universe – going off unexpectedly like camera flashbulbs. Only a handful have been found since the first discovery in 2018 – an event located about 200 million light-years away that was nicknamed "the Cow." Presently, LFBOTs are detected once per year.
Read more at NASA
