Astronomers reveal a new type of celestial object that has been hiding in plain sight for decades
It’s unclear what these objects actually are, but evidence for them has been detected by NASA’s Chandra space telescope for years
For decades, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has been detecting faint, low-energy radiation from an unknown type of celestial object. These mysterious sources, dubbed "hypersoft x-ray sources," have been hiding in plain sight amidst vast amounts of data collected by the space telescope since 1999. Initial analysis of the data was largely ignored because scientists believed the low-energy emissions were unimportant noise, but a team of researchers led by scientists from the University of Alabama and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian decided to take a second look.
After painstakingly filtering through the data and removing artifacts, the researchers discovered the telltale signatures of these low-energy emissions from what they now call "hypersoft x-ray sources." The exact nature of these objects remains unclear, but they are believed to be compact remnants of stars, possibly black holes, neutron stars, or white dwarfs that are pulling material from a companion star.
As the material falls onto these objects, it emits low-energy x-rays, which could also be accompanied by more energetic emissions in the extreme ultraviolet range. While these sources are difficult to detect from Earth due to absorption by interstellar hydrogen gas, the few that are visible could offer valuable insights into the formation of various celestial objects, from black holes to galaxies.
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