Flares from centres of galaxies – OGLE-Gaia hunt for tidal disruption events

Mariusz Gromadzki, Lukasz Wyrzykowski, Aleksandra Hamanowicz, Krzysztof Rybicki, Nada Ihanec and Kirill V. Sokolovsky

When a star gets too close to a super-massive black hole in the centre of a galaxy, it can get disrupted and partially consumed by the black hole. Such tidal disruption events (TDE) exhibit as a bright, blue and hot flares detectable in the cores of galaxies and trace population and masses of SMBHs. We present our long-term project to study the demographics of SMBHs via TDEs. We relied on transients detected primarily by OGLE and Gaia surveys, which are then followed-up by ESO, SALT, NOT as well as space telescopes. We show our first candidates for TDEs, in most case not typical, indicating there is still little known about processes in the centres of galaxies.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 7, 193-196 (2018)

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