Since dust clouds become more transparent at infrared wavelengths, Levan led near- and mid-infrared observations using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – its first use for this kind of study – as well as the Hubble Space Telescope to spot the supernova. “We cannot say conclusively that there is a supernova, which is surprising given the burst’s brightness,” said Andrew Levan, a professor of astrophysics at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. One reason is that the GRB appeared in a part of the sky that’s just a few degrees above the plane of our own galaxy, where thick dust clouds can greatly dim incoming light. With this type of GRB, astronomers expect to find a brightening supernova a few weeks later, but so far it has proven elusive. These jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays as they stream into space. As it quickly ingests the surrounding matter, the black hole blasts out jets in opposite directions containing particles accelerated to near the speed of light. Astronomers think these bursts represent the birth cries of black holes formed when the cores of massive stars collapse under their own weight. The signal from GRB 221009A had been traveling for about 1.9 billion years before it reached Earth, making it among the closest-known “long” GRBs, whose initial, or prompt, emission lasts more than two seconds. Papers describing the results presented appear in a focus issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Observations of the burst span the spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays, and include data from many NASA and partner missions, including the NICER X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, NASA’s NuSTAR observatory, and even Voyager 1 in interstellar space. Together, they prove the burst was 70 times brighter than any yet seen.īurns and other scientists presented new findings about the BOAT at the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Waikoloa, Hawaii. They then compared the results with those from the Russian team working on Konus data and Chinese teams analyzing observations from the GECAM-C detector on their SATech-01 satellite and instruments on their Insight-HXMT observatory. scientists were able to reconstruct this information from the Fermi data. The burst was so bright it effectively blinded most gamma-ray instruments in space, which means they could not directly record the real intensity of the emission. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Adam Goldstein (USRA) Their answer: once in every 10,000 years. He led an analysis of some 7,000 GRBs – mostly detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Russian Konus instrument on NASA’s Wind spacecraft – to establish how frequently events this bright may occur. “GRB 221009A was likely the brightest burst at X-ray and gamma-ray energies to occur since human civilization began,” said Eric Burns, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. After combing through all of this data, astronomers can now characterize just how bright it was and better understand its scientific impact. The burst triggered detectors on numerous spacecraft, and observatories around the globe followed up. The closer to head-on we view one of these jets, the brighter it appears.ĭownload high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.Ĭredit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center They then plow into material surrounding the doomed star and produce a multiwavelength afterglow that gradually fades away. These jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays (magenta) as they stream into space.

The black hole then drives jets of particles that drill all the way through the collapsing star at nearly the speed of light. Astronomers think most occur when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole, as illustrated in this animation. Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos.

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