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 Earth, meet GRB 090423. GRB 090423, Earth.

The fading infrared afterglow of GRB 090423 appears in the centre of this false-colour image taken with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii. The burst is the farthest cosmic explosion yet seen.

It’s amazing how we can determine depth-of-field in outer-space the observable universe. It’s even cooler knowing that beyond GRB 090423 is unknown; that is to say, if there’s anything out there at all. Only light will tell.

Astronomers have spotted the most distant object yet confirmed in the universe – a self-destructing star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from Earth. It detonated just 640 million years after the big bang, around the end of the cosmic “dark ages”, when the first stars and galaxies were lighting up space.

The object is a gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the brightest type of stellar explosion. GRBs occur when massive, spinning stars collapse to form black holes and spew out jets of gas at nearly the speed of light. These jets send gamma rays our way, along with “afterglows” at other wavelengths, which are produced when the jet heats up surrounding gas.

The burst, dubbed GRB 090423 for the date of its discovery last Thursday, was originally spotted by NASA’s Swift satellite at 0755 GMT.

Read Full Article: NewScientist

~ by Fionnlagh on May 1, 2009.

Posted in 👽 [F]-F I L E S, 📰 N E W S, 🔬 S C I E N C E/T E C H : N A T U R E 🌲, 🕶️ C O O L : S T U F F
Tags: astronomers, astronomy, caught between heaven and Earth, Edge of the universe, gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the brightest type of stellar explosion, Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, GRB 090423, NASA's Swift satellite, New Scientist, outer-space, space, The Most Distant Object In The Known Universe Spotted