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A paper entitled “Tick-Tock- The Imminent Merger of a Supermassive Black Hole Binary” has just appeared on arXiv. The AGN identified as NSV6690 in VSX has been oscillating around mag 17-17.5 with a steadily decreasing period and they predict a supermassive black hole merger sometime in the next 3 years.(and possibly within just 100-300 days based on most recent X Ray data!) If it happens it will be the first ever observed
Cheers
Robin
A low resolution spectrum taken last night (3 hours exposure) showing a very broad H alpha emission with velocities up to +-12000km/s
https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20220207_205606_9d5b2259183a3d41
Cheers
Robin
I wonder if there are any campaigns to monitor this object. Any guidelines? Anything we can contribute with?
I don’t know know of any formal campaigns involving amateurs though the AAVSO did contact the author offering support and there are a number of observers contributing brightness measurements. Here is the thread on the AAVSO forum
https://www.aavso.org/sdssj14302303nsv6690-smbh-binary-collision-candidate
I took a couple more spectra and contacted the author who though they might be showing some changes and would follow it up with some measurements of their own, though I have not heard anything since. A quick look at the AAVSO light curve does not show anything obvious.Cheers
Robin
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