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Mystery Object



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Wednesday, August 18, 1999
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Top Astronomers Can't Explain Mystery Object

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES -- A mysterious celestial object detected three years ago in
the northern sky is baffling scientists who have been unable to figure out
its makeup or how far it is from Earth.
It's rare for astronomers to find an unexplainable object, but it's even
more unusual for it to remain undefined for more than a week, said George
Djorgovski, a California Institute of Technology astronomer who helped
discover the object.
"It's fairly uncommon to stumble on something you don't have a clue
about," he said Tuesday. "It certainly hasn't happened to me, and I've been
doing this for many years."
Djorgovski and his team at Caltech's Palomar Observatory detected the
object, a pinpoint of light, during a digital survey of the northern sky.
Usually, astronomers are able to determine an object's composition and
distance by breaking down its light into a spectrum and analyzing it.
But the mystery object's spectrum does not fit any of the known patterns.
Scientists are unsure whether the object is inside our Milky Way galaxy or at
the edge of the universe.
Repeated photographs revealed no changes in its appearance. That ruled
out the possibility that it's an exploding star or supernova.
Some astronomers believe the object may be a new class of quasar, sources
of energy found in the center of galaxies and believed to be powered by
matter falling into massive black holes.
Djorgovski challenged fellow astronomers to help explain his discovery at
the June meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Chicago, but nobody
has produced an adequate explanation.
"We probably have looked at the spectra of several thousand quasars, and
this just doesn't seem to fit," said David Crampton, an astronomer with the
National Research Council of Canada. "It didn't ring any bells."
The next step will be to analyze the object's infrared spectrum,
something Djorgovski hopes to do next month at the Keck Observatory in
Hawaii.
Researchers also hope that the Hubble Space Telescope might someday be
pointed at the object, which is located in the constellation Serpens.
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Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen