2017MNRAS.465L.114W

We present the discovery and first three months of follow-up observations of a currently on-going unusual transient detected by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE-IV) survey, located in the centre of a galaxy at redshift z = 0.1655. The long rise to absolute magnitude of -20.5 mag, slow decline, very broad He and H spectral features make OGLE16aaa similar to other optical/UV tidal disruption events (TDEs). Weak narrow emission lines in the spectrum and archival photometric observations suggest the host galaxy is a weak-line active galactic nucleus, which has been accreting at higher rate in the past. OGLE16aaa, along with SDSS J0748, seems to form a sub-class of TDEs by weakly or recently active supermassive black holes (SMBHs). This class might bridge the TDEs by quiescent SMBHs and flares observed as 'changing-look quasars', if we interpret the latter as TDEs. If this picture is true, the previously applied requirement for identifying a flare as a TDE that it had to come from an inactive nucleus, could be leading to observational bias in TDE selection, thus affecting TDE-rate estimations.