Astronomers from around the world have combined data from ground and space based telescopes to paint a detailed portrait of a stellar explosion that was briefly brighter than the galaxy that contained it, visible to the naked eye despite originating halfway across the universe. The gamma-ray burst, catalogued as GRB 080319B, was the result of […]
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) have baffled scientists for more than three decades since their discovery in 1973. They can last anywhere from fractions of a second to minutes, and they can come from any direction in the sky, shining billions of times brighter than their host galaxies. The main problem for scientists trying to observe […]
Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory have set a new astronomical record by observing the afterglow of the most distant gamma ray burst ever. The Italian astronomers said the afterglow had a measured red-shift of 6.3, meaning the light has taken 12.7 billion years to reach Earth. Science’s best estimates put the age of the […]
