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A Stellar Explosion You Could See on Earth!
March 24, 2008Astronomers are familiar with seeing amazing things through their telescopes. But nothing prepared them for an incredible explosion detected early Wednesday morning by NASA's Swift satellite. At 2:12 a.m. EDT, Swift detected an explosion from deep space that was so powerful that its afterglow was briefly visible to the naked eye. Even more astonishing, the explosion itself took place halfway across the visible universe!
Never before has anything so far away come even close to naked-eye visibility. The explosion was so far away that it took its light 7,500,000,000 (7.5 billion) years to reach Earth! In fact, the explosion took place so long ago that Earth had not yet come into existence.
"No other known object or type of explosion could be seen by the naked eye at such an immense distance," says Swift science team member Stephen Holland of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We don't know yet if anyone was looking at the afterglow at the time it brightened to peak visibility. But if someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid."
If you venture out to a remote location and gaze into the sky on a dark, moonless night, the farthest object you can see with your naked eye is a spiral galaxy called M33. The galaxy is far away by Earthly standards, but it is nearby on a cosmic distant scale. The light from M33 takes 2,900,000 (2.9 million) years to reach Earth, making it thousands of times closer than the March 19 explosion.
The explosion itself is called a gamma ray burst, since much of the explosion's energy was in the form of gamma rays. A gamma ray is a type of light with energy far higher than the light we see with our eyes. Most gamma ray bursts originate when huge stars die and explode. Instead of blowing material in all directions, they channel an incredible amount of energy into two high-speed jets, like turbocharged cosmic blowtorches.
When these jets plow into surrounding clouds of gas, they light up the gas, generating an afterglow that can be seen by telescopes in space and on Earth. The afterglows generally get fairly bright, but never before has an afterglow been visible to the naked eye. The March 19 gamma ray burst's afterglow was bright enough for about 30 seconds that someone could have seen it without a telescope or binoculars.
"Even by the standards of gamma-ray bursts, this burst was a whopper," says Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels of NASA Goddard. "It blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far."
Astronomers have just begun their scientific analysis of the burst, so they do not know yet why it was so powerful, and why the afterglow was so much brighter than other afterglows. Perhaps the burst itself was more energetic than other bursts, or perhaps its jets were very narrow, and were aimed directly at Earth.
Swift normally detects about two gamma ray bursts per week. But March 19 was a special day. The satellite detected four bursts on that day, which is a Swift record for one day. "Coincidentally, the passing of Arthur C. Clarke the day before seems to have set the universe ablaze with gamma ray bursts," says Swift science team member Judith Racusin of Penn State University in University Park, Pa.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
If you venture out to a remote location and gaze into the sky on a dark, moonless night, the farthest object you can see with your naked eye is a spiral galaxy called M33. The galaxy is far away by Earthly standards, but it is nearby on a cosmic distant scale. The light from M33 takes 2,900,000 (2.9 million) years to reach Earth, making it thousands of times closer than the March 19 explosion.
The explosion itself is called a gamma ray burst, since much of the explosion's energy was in the form of gamma rays. A gamma ray is a type of light with energy far higher than the light we see with our eyes. Most gamma ray bursts originate when huge stars die and explode. Instead of blowing material in all directions, they channel an incredible amount of energy into two high-speed jets, like turbocharged cosmic blowtorches.
When these jets plow into surrounding clouds of gas, they light up the gas, generating an afterglow that can be seen by telescopes in space and on Earth. The afterglows generally get fairly bright, but never before has an afterglow been visible to the naked eye. The March 19 gamma ray burst's afterglow was bright enough for about 30 seconds that someone could have seen it without a telescope or binoculars.
"Even by the standards of gamma-ray bursts, this burst was a whopper," says Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels of NASA Goddard. "It blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far."
Astronomers have just begun their scientific analysis of the burst, so they do not know yet why it was so powerful, and why the afterglow was so much brighter than other afterglows. Perhaps the burst itself was more energetic than other bursts, or perhaps its jets were very narrow, and were aimed directly at Earth.
Swift normally detects about two gamma ray bursts per week. But March 19 was a special day. The satellite detected four bursts on that day, which is a Swift record for one day. "Coincidentally, the passing of Arthur C. Clarke the day before seems to have set the universe ablaze with gamma ray bursts," says Swift science team member Judith Racusin of Penn State University in University Park, Pa.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Gamma Ray Current Events and Gamma Ray News RSSIowa State researchers contribute to discovery of gamma rays from starburst galaxy
Iowa State University astrophysicists contributed to the recent discovery that a galaxy quickly creating new stars is also a source of high energy gamma rays.
Starburst galaxy sheds light on longstanding cosmic mystery
An international collaboration that includes scientists from the University of Delaware's Bartol Research Institute in the Department of Physics and Astronomy has discovered very-high-energy gamma rays in the Cigar Galaxy (M82), a bright galaxy filled with exploding stars 12 million light years from Earth.
NASA's Fermi Telescope Detects Gamma-Ray From
Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
Blast from the past gives clues about early universe
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have gained tantalizing insights into the nature of the most distant object ever observed in the Universe -- a gigantic stellar explosion known as a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).
Fermi telescope caps its first year with a glimpse of space-time
During its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope mapped the extreme sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity.
Invading black holes explain cosmic flashes
Black holes are invading stars, providing a radical explanation to bright flashes in the universe that are one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy today.
Fermi Large Area Telescope reveals pulsing gamma-ray sources
Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Space Science Division and a team of international researchers have positively identified cosmic sources of gamma-ray emissions through the discovery of 16 pulsating neutron stars.
New experiment could reveal make-up of the universe
The detectors will become part of the Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA) experiment, currently based in Italy, which aims to create a 'fingerprint' of the inside of the atomic nucleus to understand the structure of all matter in the Universe, including human beings and the stars.
Successful completion of first riser-drilling operations in earthquake zone
Kumano Basin off Kii Peninsula, approximately 58 km southeast of Japan- Despite harsh weather and ocean conditions, and complex geological characteristics of its drill site, the deep-sea drilling vessel CHIKYU, for the first time in the history of scientific ocean drilling, conducted riser-drilling operations to drill successfully down to a depth of 1,603.7 meters beneath the seafloor (at water depth of 2,054 meters).
Researchers report successful riser-drilling operations in seismogenic zone
Kumano Basin off Kii Peninsula, approximately 58 km southeast of Japan- Despite harsh atmospheric and ocean conditions, and complex geological characteristics of its drill site, the deep-sea drilling vessel CHIKYU, for the first time in the history of scientific ocean drilling, conducted riser-drilling operations to successfully drill down to a depth of 1,603.7 meters beneath the sea floor (at water depth of 2,054 meters).
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