The brilliant burst of gamma rays was recorded by Swift Space Telescope
Lighting up a distant galaxy, BOAT, or the Brightest of All Time by astronomers, is now considered to be the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded. These bursts of energetic explosions are set off when a large star dies and leaves behind a black hole or a neutron star.
This collapse leads to jets of gamma rays picking away at the former star, if pointed coincidentally at Earth, astronomers can see them clearly as they burst forward.
Researchers announced, on October 13, that This burst, in particular, named GRB 221009A, was triggered by a supernova that created a black hole in a galaxy that is approximately 2 billion light-years from Earth, it is said to have released about as much energy as much as three suns, converting that mass into pure energy.
On October 9, at about 10:15 a.m., NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a gamma-ray telescope in orbit, automatically discovered the explosion, and immediately alerted the astronomers about the incident.
Penn State astrophysicist Jamie Kennea, the head of science operations for Swift, says of the incident: “At the time, when it went off, it looked kind of weird to us,”
The plane of the Milky Way appeared to match the blast’s position in the sky. Kennea and her colleagues initially believed the blast to be within our own galaxy and so unlikely to be an event with such a significant increase in energy as a gamma-ray burst. This burst would have been visible to the human eye if it had occurred inside the Milky Way, however that wasn’t the case.
But, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, an orbiting NASA telescope designed to help observe such events. had also picked up on the flash; so bright that it oversaturated the telescope. It was among the brightest phenomenon the telescope had ever recorded. After re-examining the Swift data, Kennea and her colleagues came to the conclusion that the flash was the brightest gamma-ray burst they had ever seen in their 50 years of watching such explosions.
“It’s quite exceptional,” Kennea said, as “It stands head and shoulders above the rest.”
The initial explosion was followed by a burst that diminished over the next few days but was still noticeably bright. Astronomers anticipate that the burst will eventually fade even further and be replaced with ripples in the supernova remnant.
According to Kennea, the close proximity with GRB 221009A was probably at least largely responsible for the exceptional brightness. Even though it may seem like a few billion light-years separate us, the average gamma-ray burst is actually 10 billion light-years away. There is also a possibility that it is inherently luminescent, however, there hasn’t been enough time to research why it is so.
Kennea also believes the new discovery is going to “challenge some of our assumptions of how gamma-ray bursts work,”, as the data collected will change the foundation of pre-existing research on gamma rays or high energy lift. Kennea continues: “I think (gamma-ray burst theorists) are going to be inundated with so much data that this is going to change theories that they thought were pretty solid”
According to the initial research, the BOAT’s brightness can be attributed to major two factors. First, the gamma-ray bursts, it is possible to have happened rather close to Earth at 2.4 billion light-years (though far outside of our galaxy). Another possibility is that the BOAT’s powerful jet was targeted in our direction. This kind of phenomenon only happens once per few hundred years as a result of these two contributing causes.
Starting in late November, GRB 221009A will temporarily obscure the sun from Earth’s perspective as it moves behind it. Nevertheless, astronomers are optimistic that they will be able to detect it when it becomes visible once more in February because its brightness continues to be so strong even now.
