Explanation:
An explosion so powerful it was seen clear across the visible universe was recorded in gamma-radiation last week by NASA's orbiting
Swift Observatory.
Farther than any known
galaxy,
quasar, or optical
supernova, the
gamma-ray burst recorded last week was clocked at
redshift 8.2, making it the farthest explosion of any type
yet detected.
Occurring only 630 million years after the
Big Bang,
GRB 090423 detonated so early that astronomers had no direct evidence that anything explodable even existed back then.
The faint infrared afterglow of
GRB 090423 was recovered by large ground telescopes within minutes of being discovered.
The afterglow is circled in the above picture taken by the large
Gemini North Telescope in
Hawaii,
USA.
An exciting possibility is that this
gamma-ray burst occurred in one of the very
first generation of stars and
announced the birth of an early
black hole.
Surely,
GRB 090423
provides unique data from a relatively
unexplored epoch in our universe and a distant beacon from which the intervening universe can be studied.
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