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ASASSN-15C

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Also known as ASAS-SN-15lh

ASASSN-15lh (supernova designation SN 2015L) is an extremely luminous astronomical transient event discovered by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN), with the appearance of a superluminous supernova event. It was first detected on June 14, 2015, located within a faint galaxy in the southern constellation Indus, and was the most luminous supernova-like object ever observed. At its peak, ASASSN-15lh was 570 billion times brighter than the Sun, and 20 times brighter than the combined light emitted by the Milky Way Galaxy. The emitted energy was exceeded by PS1-10adi.

Key facts

Supernova.image
ASASSN-15lhLightCurve.png
Supernova.caption
A visual band light curve for ASASSN-15lh, plotted from data published by Godoy-Rivera et al. (2017). The purple line shows the brightness of the host galaxy.
Supernova.host
APMUKS(BJ) B215839.70−615403.9
Supernova.mag_v
16.9

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Instance of
Hypernova
Constellation
Indus
Image
Asassn15lh.png
Show 12 more facts
spectral class
SNSLSN-I
time of discovery or invention
2015-06-14
redshift
0.2326
apparent magnitude
16.9
absolute magnitude
-23.5
time period
J2000.0
right ascension
330.564375
declination
-61.659611
epoch
J2000.0
catalog code
SN 2015L
radial velocity
61796
Commons category
ASASSN-15lh
Sources (3)

via Wikidata · CC0

~8 min read

Encyclopedic overview

12 sections
Contents
  • Discovery
  • Properties
  • Host galaxy
  • Suggested mechanisms
  • Superluminous supernova
  • Magnetar
  • Quark nova
  • Tidal disruption event (TDE)
  • Gravitational lensing
  • References
  • Further reading
  • External links

ASASSN-15lh (supernova designation SN 2015L) is an extremely luminous astronomical transient event discovered by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN), with the appearance of a superluminous supernova event. It was first detected on June 14, 2015, located within a faint galaxy in the southern constellation Indus, and was the most luminous supernova-like object ever observed. At its peak, ASASSN-15lh was 570 billion times brighter than the Sun, and 20 times brighter than the combined light emitted by the Milky Way Galaxy. The emitted energy was exceeded by PS1-10adi.

The nature of ASASSN-15lh is disputed. The most popular explanations are that it is the most luminous Type I supernova (hypernova) ever observed, or a tidal disruption event around a supermassive black hole. Other hypotheses include gravitational lensing, a quark nova inside a Wolf–Rayet star, or a rapid magnetar spindown.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “ASASSN-15C” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.