What tools do we (mankind) use to discern what happened ‘400 light-years away? It’s difficult for me to even imagine such a measure of space. Fascinating, though.
I’ve heard two of the biggest space based telescopes in the entire world are owned by NASA.
A. Hubble Space Telescope, with a diameter of 2.5 mtr,
B. James Webb Space Telescope with a diameter of 6.5 mtr.
Since the article talks about detecting the “radio signature” of the event, I assume they used a radio telescope, not a visual one. Radio telescopes are handy because you can just build a big parabolic dish to focus the radio waves and detect fainter signals from farther away. You don’t need to worry about all of the problems associated with crafting large high precision mirrors or lenses like you do for optical telescopes.