Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Earth's Major Telescopes Investigate GRB 130427A

NASA ^ | May 08, 2013 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: A tremendous explosion has occurred in the nearby universe and major telescopes across Earth and space are investigating. Dubbed GRB 130427A, the gamma-ray burst was first seen by the Earth-orbiting Swift satellite in high energy X-rays and quickly reported down to Earth. Within three minutes, the half-meter ISON telescope in New Mexico found the blast in visible light, noted its extreme brightness, and relayed more exact coordinates. Within the next few minutes, the bright optical counterpart was being tracked by several quickly re-pointable telescopes including the 2.0-meter P60 telescope in California, the 1.3-meter PAIRTEL telescope in New Mexico, and the 2.0-meter Faulkes Telescope North in Hawaii. Within two hours, the 8.2-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii noted a redshift of 0.34, placing the explosion about 470 million light years away -- considered nearby in cosmological terms. Previously recorded images from the RAPTOR full-sky monitors were scanned and a very bright optical counterpart -- magnitude 7.4 -- was found 50 seconds before the Swift trigger. The brightest burst in recent years, a signal from GRB 130427A has also been found in low energy radio waves by the Very Large Array (VLA) and at the highest energies ever recorded by the Fermi satellite. Neutrino, gravitational wave, and telescopes designed to detect only extremely high energy photons are checking their data for a GRB 130427A signal. Pictured in the above animation, the entire gamma-ray sky is shown becoming momentarily dominated by the intense glow of GRB 130427A. Continued tracking the optical counterpart will surely be ongoing as there is a possibility that the glow of a classic supernova will soon emerge.

[Illustration Credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi LAT Collaboration]

[SunkenCiv]

The explanation had to move to the reply field, it was too big. Speaking of that, the big one.

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[Ron/GA]

I believe that this occured in a nearby galaxy. They’re not too many nearby universes.

[LibWhacker]

... magnitude 7.4 ...

Holy smokes!!! That's visible to the naked eye, if you have really good eyes and are somewhere where the seeing is really good (very dark, no haze, it'd help to be up in the mountains, etc.). But, still... Holy smokes!!!

[left that other site]

This is Hugh!

[Hot Tabasco]

There’s two more in that photo, one at the top and one on the bottom right.......

[Gargantua]

"This is Hugh!"

And series!

[left that other site]

I an STUNED!

[martin_fierro]

Many Bothans .... died ... To bring us this information

[Sawdring]

Old news, it happened 470 million years ago.

[rarestia]

This is definitely in our “local group,” which is exciting to say the least.

[rarestia]

My apologies, I misread the distance. 470 MILLION ly is well outside our local group, but that makes something of this magnitude even more exciting, IMO.

[ColoCdn]

Grab your beebers.

[left that other site]

Justin? Is that You?

[ravenwolf]

Ok, so we are seeing something that happened 470 million years ago, what does it all mean?

[mikrofon]

Wow ... a whole galaxy like North Korea

[doorgunner69]

Sounds like Hicks took off and nuked them from orbit...........