Observation by Robin Leadbeater: Impending Supermassive Black Hole Merger...

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Robin Leadbeater

Observer

Robin Leadbeater

Observed

2022 Feb 07 - 00:38

Uploaded

2022 Feb 07 - 20:56

Equipment

ALPY 200 spectrograph
ATIK 428 ex camera
Celestron C11 SCT 280mm aperture f5.5

Exposure

3 hours

Location

Wigton Cumbria

Target name

NSV 6690/SDSSJ1430+2303/2MASS J14301603+2303445

Title

Impending Supermassive Black Hole Merger ?

About this image

According to the recent ArXiv paper "Tick-Tock: The Imminent Merger of a Supermassive Black Hole Binary Ning Jian et all" published 2022-01-27 the mag 17 Seyfert galaxy SDSSJ1430+2303 (identified as suspect variable NSV 6690 in VSX) is home to a supermassive black hole binary which may merge in the next 3 years and possibly sooner, perhaps within 100-300 days based on the rapid rate of decay of its orbit. If it does this will be the first such event to be observed. My low resolution spectrum (blue) is overlaid on the last spectrum in the paper dated 2022-01-03 (grey). The wavelength scale has been corrected for the 0.081 redshift, to show the rest wavelength. The spectrum shows a very broad H alpha emission with velocities up to +-12000km/s from the region of the closely orbiting black hole pair.

Files associated with this observation

NSV6690_20220206_poster.png (309.9 kB)

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Eric Watkins, David Nicholson, Tim Haymes, Grant Privett, Mike Harlow, Dr Andrew Smith, David Arditti, Dr Paul Leyland, Hugh Allen, Callum Potter, Nick James

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