The experts are part of a revolutionary new project that will obtain millions of new and detailed spectral observations of the sky over the next five years, capturing the light from cosmic objects in every individual colour.

The observations are being carried out using the new 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) facility, installed on the VISTA telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile, which has just obtained its first light.

The Queen’s researchers are part of the Time Domain Extragalactic Survey (TiDES) project and will be working with other UK experts to analyse thousands of supernovae and other energetic events.

The data will provide a unique insight into exploding stars and other exotic and dramatic phenomena like the shredding of stars by supermassive black holes. Uniquely, it will allow the team to study their detailed chemical composition and properties.

Through the project, Dr Matt Nicholl and Professor Stephen Smartt will lead the hunt for stars that have been shredded and eaten alive by black holes in the centres of galaxies.

Stellar feeding frenzies

Dr Nicholl explains: “As a team, we are very excited to begin analysing this huge and unique data set. Having access to this kind of data for tens of thousands of exploding stars and hungry black holes gives us a real opportunity to unlock some of the mysteries around how stars evolve and die."

Dr Nicholl adds: “At Queen’s, we are especially keen to find stars that have been shredded and eaten alive by ‘medium-size’ black holes. These have masses much larger than a star, but not as big as the monster black holes we see in typical large galaxies.

“Finding these rare stellar feeding frenzies can tell us how massive black holes grow to the sizes we see today. TiDES is the first project that can find enough of them to do this experiment."

Needle in a galactic haystack

Professor Stephen Smartt comments: “As astronomers, our speciality is looking for things that change in the sky. Searching for unusual explosions and black holes is a bit like finding a needle in a galactic haystack.

“Now that 4MOST has obtained its first light, the hard work will begin to search through this haystack every night and see what we find. We’ll be working on providing high-precision measurements of almost 1,000 supermassive black holes, 10,000 supernovae, and 100,000 galaxies."

Professor Smartt adds: “If we’re lucky, we may even find new kinds of stellar explosions! This will transform our understanding of how galaxies and black holes grow together and hopefully unlock some of the mysteries around our universe.”

TiDES allows UK astronomers rights to access data from the US National Science Foundation and US Department of Energy’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory through the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

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