(Image Credit: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde)
A mysterious blast of light spotted near the constellation of Leo earlier this year on April 27 is the brightest Gamma Ray explosion ever recorded, triggered by an extremely powerful stellar explosion.
Several different satellites, including NASA’s Swift Satellite and Fermi Gamma Ray telescope, spotted an unusually bright burst of gamma radiation, which unleashed an energetic jet of particles travelling close to the speed of light.
(Image Credit: NASA/Swift)
“We suddenly saw a gamma-ray burst that was extremely bright — a monster gamma-ray burst,” study co-author Daniele Malesani, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said in a statement. “This [was] one of the most powerful gamma-ray bursts we have ever observed with the Swift satellite.”
Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB’s) are the powerful type of explosions known in the universe, usually the indication of the destruction of a star. The stars are too faint to be seen but the supernova explosion signalling the end of the star can cause violent bursts of gamma radiation.
Check out the entire article here at LiveScience.
