The rise and fall of the nuclear transient PS16dtm

Thanks to the advent of large-scale optical surveys, a diverse set of flares from the nuclear regions of galaxies has recently been discovered. These include the disruption of stars by supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies - nuclear transients known as tidal disruption events (TDEs). Active galactic nuclei (AGN) can show extreme changes in the brightness and emission line intensities, often referred to as changing-look AGN (CLAGN). Given the physical and observational similarities, the interpretation and distinction of nuclear transients as CLAGN or TDEs remains difficult. One of the obstacles of making progress in the field is the lack of well-sampled data of long-lived nuclear outbursts in AGN. I will present PS16dtm, a nuclear transient in a Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLSy1) galaxy which has been proposed to be a TDE candidate. I will show our multi-year spectroscopic and photometric study of PS16dtm, which can help us to better understand the outbursts originating in NLSy1 galaxies