Distant Star's Explosion Shatters Record

Distant Star's Explosion Shatters Record
By SETH BORENSTEIN,AP
Posted: 2008-03-22 21:55:54
Filed Under: Science News
WASHINGTON (March 21) - The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye.


Photo Gallery
Stefan Immler, Swift / NASA Out-of-This-World
Space Photos1 of 28 The light from an exploding star 7.5 billion light years away set a record Wednesday for the most distant object ever seen with the naked eye. It's also the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen, captured here on an X-ray telescope, left, and an optical-ultraviolet telescope, right.

The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday.

The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said. It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

However, NASA has no reports that any skywatchers spotted the burst, which lasted less than an hour. Telescopic measurements show that the burst - which occurred when the universe was about half its current age, before Earth was formed - was bright enough to be seen without a telescope.

"Someone would have had to run out and look at it with a naked eye, but didn't," said Gehrels, chief of NASA's astroparticles physics lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The starburst would have appeared as bright as some of the stars in the handle of the Little Dipper constellation, said Penn State University astronomer David Burrows. How it looked wasn't remarkable, but the distance traveled was.

The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.

"This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe," Burrows said.

Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said.


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2008-03-21 18:48:58