New burst vaporizes cosmic distance record. "NASA's Swift satellite and an international team of astronomers have found a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old, or less than five percent of its present age. The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen."
posted by homunculus on Apr 28, 2009 - 13 comments

On March 5, 1979, astronomers saw a burst of gamma rays so strong it swamped their detectors. Another rare burst in 1998 helped confirm the existence of magnetars, intensely powerful magnetic stars, unusual enough that there might only be a dozen or so in the galaxy. Another one has just been found --when it let off a burst last December that, for a fraction of a second, was brighter than the full moon.
posted by gimonca on Feb 18, 2005 - 23 comments

Massive explosion rocks NASA And Pasadena, and a few other places, too. It's not every day you get to watch a black hole form. Includes cool animation (.mov file). Seems the gamma ray burst detector picks up two or three significant events every month or so.
posted by kewms on Mar 20, 2003 - 13 comments