N2NH
05-07-2013, 11:18 AM
While too distant to be of a risk to us, this GRB set records in terms of being the most powerful and duration.
Two NASA space telescopes have captured what appears to be the most powerful star explosion ever detected, a cosmic event so luminous that scientists dubbed it "eye-wateringly bright" despite being 3.6 billion light-years from Earth.On April 27, NASA's Swift Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope spotted the highest-energy gamma-ray burst (GRB) — an explosion of a massive star in the last stage of its life — ever before seen.
NASA scientists combined the observations into a video animation of the historic gamma-ray burst to illustrate the surprising brightness of this star explosion.
"We have waited a long time for a gamma-ray burst this shockingly, eye-wateringly bright," Julie McEnery, a project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "The GRB lasted so long that a record number of telescopes on the ground were able to catch it while space-based observations were still ongoing."
Story here (http://www.wunderground.com/news/star-explosion-most-powerful-20130507)
Two NASA space telescopes have captured what appears to be the most powerful star explosion ever detected, a cosmic event so luminous that scientists dubbed it "eye-wateringly bright" despite being 3.6 billion light-years from Earth.On April 27, NASA's Swift Space Telescope and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope spotted the highest-energy gamma-ray burst (GRB) — an explosion of a massive star in the last stage of its life — ever before seen.
NASA scientists combined the observations into a video animation of the historic gamma-ray burst to illustrate the surprising brightness of this star explosion.
"We have waited a long time for a gamma-ray burst this shockingly, eye-wateringly bright," Julie McEnery, a project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "The GRB lasted so long that a record number of telescopes on the ground were able to catch it while space-based observations were still ongoing."
Story here (http://www.wunderground.com/news/star-explosion-most-powerful-20130507)