Latest GRB 080916C Stories

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The first gamma-ray burst to be seen in high-resolution from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "We were waiting for this one," said Peter Michelson, the principal investigator on Fermi's Large Area Telescope at Stanford University....

The first gamma-ray burst to be seen in high-resolution from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen."We were waiting for this one," said Peter Michelson, the principal investigator on Fermi's Large Area Telescope at Stanford University. "Burst emissions at these energies are still poorly understood, and Fermi is giving us the tools to...

An explosion originating near the edge of the universe has been seen by an orbiting NASA telescope. The burst of gamma rays is the farthest such event ever detected. The blast, designated GRB 080913, arose from an exploding star 12.8 billion light-years away. It was detected by the Swift satellite and announced today. "This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen," said the mission's lead scientist Neil Gehrels of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's...

Astronomers from around the world combined data from ground- and space-based telescopes to paint a detailed portrait of the brightest explosion ever seen. The observations reveal that the jets of the gamma-ray burst called GRB 080319B were aimed almost directly at the Earth. GRB 080319B was so intense that, despite happening halfway across the Universe, it could have been seen briefly with the unaided eye (ESO 08/08). In a paper to appear in the 11 September issue of Nature, Judith Racusin of...

Data from satellites and observatories around the globe show a jet from a powerful stellar explosion witnessed March 19 was aimed almost directly at Earth.NASA's Swift satellite detected the explosion - formally named GRB 080319B - at 2:13 a.m. EDT that morning and pinpointed its position in the constellation Bootes. The event, called a gamma-ray burst, became bright enough for human eyes to see. Observations of the event are giving astronomers the most detailed portrait of a burst ever...

Today, NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST for short) left Earth onboard a Delta II rocket. "The entire GLAST Team is elated," reported program manager Kevin Grady of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shortly after the rocket's liftoff from Cape Canaveral. "The observatory is now on-orbit and all systems continue to operate as planned."What is NASA's newest space telescope going to accomplish? GLAST will explore the most extreme environments in the...

From mother Earth, the night sky can look peaceful and unchanging, but the universe as seen in gamma-rays is a place of sudden and chaotic violence. Using gamma-ray telescopes, astronomers witness short but tremendously intense explosions called gamma-ray bursts, and there is nothing more powerful. No one is sure what causes gamma-ray bursts. Favored possibilities include the collision of two neutron stars or a sort of super-supernova that occurs when extremely massive stars explode. One...

Oldest known short gamma ray burst occurred halfway back to Big BangUsing the powerful one-two combo of NASA's Swift satellite and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers from a number of institutions, including Johns Hopkins, have detected a mysterious type of cosmic explosion farther back in time than ever before. The explosion, known as a short gamma-ray burst (GRB), took place 7.4 billion years ago, more than halfway back to the Big Bang."This discovery dramatically moves back the time...

LONDON (Reuters) - Teams of international scientists have used observations from NASA's Swift satellite and other telescopes to witness the evolution of a cosmic blast into a stellar explosion or supernova.The blast is thought to be a milder type of gamma-ray burst (GRB) -- the most powerful type of explosion known to astronomers -- called an X-ray flash.It is known as GRB060218 after the February 18 date it began in the constellation of Aries about 440 million light years away. A light year...

Thanks to a clever piece of design and a sophisticated piece of analysis by European astronomers, Integral - ESA's orbiting gamma ray observatory - can now make images of the most powerful gamma-ray bursts even if the spacecraft itself is pointing somewhere completely different.Scientists know that once every day or two, a powerful gamma ray burst (GRB) will take place somewhere in the Universe. Most will last between 0.1 and 100 seconds, so if your telescope is not pointing in exactly the...