Death of massive star creates brightest burst ever seen

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The extremely luminous afterglow of GRB 080319B was imaged by Swifts X-ray Telescope (left) and OpticalUltraviolet Telescope (right). This was by far the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen. Credit: NASASwiftStefan Immler et al.
The extremely luminous afterglow of GRB 080319B was imaged by Swift's X-ray Telescope (left) and Optical/Ultraviolet Telescope (right). This was by far the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al.

Gamma-Ray Bursts are the most powerful explosive events in the Universe. They occur in far-off galaxies and so are usually faint. But on the morning of March 19th 2008 the Swift satellite found a burst which was so bright it could have been seen without binoculars or a telescope even though it was seven thousand times further away than the Andromeda galaxy.


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