Astronomers baffled over mysterious space light

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LOS ANGELES (AP) - 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 S. 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.

 

The Digital Palomar Sky Survey, which has collected information on more

than 50 million galaxies and about 2 billion stars, is about two-thirds

complete. The DPSS and other sweeping surveys like it are likely to create

more mysteries.