 | |
| Event type | Gamma-ray burst |
|---|---|
| Date | c. 5 billion years ago (detected 21 June 2010) |
| Instrument | Swift |
| Constellation | Indus |
| Right ascension | 21h 01m 13.12s |
| Declination | −51° 06′ 22.5″ |
| Distance | c. 5 billion ly |
| Other designations | GRB 100621A |
GRB 100621A was a gamma-ray burst observed on June 21, 2010, by the Swift spacecraft. [1] [2] It is the second brightest gamma-ray burst yet observed, after GRB 130427A. [3] The distance is reported to be approximately five billion light years.
In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies, being the brightest and most extreme explosive events in the entire universe, as NASA describes the bursts as the "most powerful class of explosions in the universe". They are the most energetic and luminous electromagnetic events since the Big Bang. Gamma-ray bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours. After the initial flash of gamma rays, an "afterglow" is emitted, which is longer lived and usually emitted at longer wavelengths.
Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, previously called the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer, is a NASA three-telescope space observatory for studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and monitoring the afterglow in X-ray, and UV/Visible light at the location of a burst. It was launched on 20 November 2004, aboard a Delta II launch vehicle. Headed by principal investigator Neil Gehrels until his death in February 2017, the mission was developed in a joint partnership between Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and an international consortium from the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. The mission is operated by Pennsylvania State University as part of NASA's Medium Explorer program (MIDEX).
GRB 970228 was the first gamma-ray burst (GRB) for which an afterglow was observed. It was detected on 28 February 1997 at 02:58 UTC. Since 1993, physicists had predicted GRBs to be followed by a lower-energy afterglow, but until this event, GRBs had only been observed in highly luminous bursts of high-energy gamma rays ; this resulted in large positional uncertainties which left their nature very unclear.
The General Coordinates Network (GCN), formerly known as the Gamma-ray burst Coordinates Network, is an open-source platform created by NASA to receive and transmit alerts about astronomical transient phenomena. This includes neutrino detections by observatories such as IceCube or Super-Kamiokande, gravitational wave events from the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA interferometers, and gamma-ray bursts observed by Fermi, Swift or INTEGRAL. One of the main goals is to allow for follow-up observations of an event by other observatories, in hope to observe multi-messenger events.
Cornelis A. "Neil" Gehrels was an American astrophysicist specializing in the field of gamma-ray astronomy. He was Chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) from 1995 until his death, and was best known for his work developing the field from early balloon instruments to today's space observatories such as the NASA Swift mission, for which he was the principal investigator. He was leading the WFIRST wide-field infrared telescope forward toward a launch in the mid-2020s. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
GRB 080913 was a gamma-ray burst (GRB) observed on September 13, 2008. The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst satellite made the detection, with follow-up and additional observations from ground-based observatories and instruments, including the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) and the Very Large Telescope. At 12.8 billion light-years and redshift of 6.7, the burst was the most distant GRB observed until GRB 090423 on April 23, 2009. This stellar explosion occurred around 825 million years after the Big Bang.
The Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) is an imaging instrument used to investigate Gamma-Ray Burst afterglows and for doing follow-up observations on exoplanets using transit photometry. It is operated at the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in the southern part of the Atacama desert, about 600 kilometres north of Santiago de Chile and at an altitude of 2,400 metres.
GRB 970508 was a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected on May 8, 1997, at 21:42 UTC; it is historically important as the second GRB with a detected afterglow at other wavelengths, the first to have a direct redshift measurement of the afterglow, and the first to be detected at radio wavelengths.
The history of gamma-ray began with the serendipitous detection of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) on July 2, 1967, by the U.S. Vela satellites. After these satellites detected fifteen other GRBs, Ray Klebesadel of the Los Alamos National Laboratory published the first paper on the subject, Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts of Cosmic Origin. As more and more research was done on these mysterious events, hundreds of models were developed in an attempt to explain their origins.
GRB 090423 was a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected by the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission on April 23, 2009, at 07:55:19 UTC whose afterglow was detected in the infrared and enabled astronomers to determine that its redshift is z = 8.2, making it one of the most distant objects detected at that time with a spectroscopic redshift.
GRB 991216, nicknamed the Beethoven Burst by Dr. Brad Schaefer of Yale University, was a gamma-ray burst observed on December 16, 1999, coinciding with the 229th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's birth. A gamma-ray burst is a highly luminous flash associated with an explosion in a distant galaxy and producing gamma rays, the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation, and often followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitted at longer wavelengths.
GRB 090429B was a gamma-ray burst observed on 29 April 2009 by the Burst Alert Telescope aboard the Swift satellite. The burst triggered a standard burst-response observation sequence, which started 106 seconds after the burst. The X-ray telescope aboard the satellite identified an uncatalogued fading source. No optical or UV counterpart was seen in the UV–optical telescope. Around 2.5 hours after the burst trigger, a series of observations was carried out by the Gemini North telescope, which detected a bright object in the infrared part of the spectrum. No evidence of a host galaxy was found either by Gemini North or by the Hubble Space Telescope. Though this burst was detected in 2009, it was not until May 2011 that its distance estimate of 13.14 billion light-years was announced. With 90% likelihood, the burst had a photometric redshift greater than z = 9.06, which would make it the most distant GRB known, although the error bar on this estimate is large, providing a lower limit of z > 7.
GRB 101225A, also known as the "Christmas burst", was a cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010. The gamma-ray emission lasted at least 28 minutes, which is unusually long. Follow-up observations of the burst's afterglow by the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories were unable to determine the object's distance using spectroscopic methods.
GRB 130427A was a record-setting gamma-ray burst, discovered starting on April 27, 2013. This GRB was associated to SN 2013cq, of which the appearance of optical signal was predicted on May 2, 2013 and detected on May 13, 2013. The Fermi space observatory detected a gamma-ray with an energy of at least 94 billion electron volts. It was simultaneously detected by the Burst Alert Telescope aboard the Swift telescope and was the brightest burst Swift had ever detected. It was one of the five closest GRBs, at about 3.6 billion light-years away, and was comparatively long-lasting.
Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) recorded one gamma ray with an energy of at least 94 billion electron volts (GeV), or some 35 billion times the energy of visible light, and about three times greater than the LAT's previous record. The GeV emission from the burst lasted for hours, and it remained detectable by the LAT for the better part of a day, setting a new record for the longest gamma-ray emission from a GRB.
A kilonova is a transient astronomical event that occurs in a compact binary system when two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole merge. These mergers are thought to produce gamma-ray bursts and emit bright electromagnetic radiation, called "kilonovae", due to the radioactive decay of heavy r-process nuclei that are produced and ejected fairly isotropically during the merger process. The measured high sphericity of the kilonova AT2017gfo at early epochs was deduced from the blackbody nature of its spectrum.
The Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory (UFFO) Pathfinder is a space observatory measuring prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) both in optical/UV and in X-ray range down to sub-second timescales for the first time. Instead of turning the whole satellite towards GRB location like the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission, UFFO employs a slewing mirror telescope approach – the optical path of the telescope is changed by rotation of motorized mirror within ~1 second after burst was detected.
GRB 160625B was a bright gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on 25 June 2016 and, three minutes later, by the Large Area Telescope. This was followed by a bright prompt optical flash, during which variable linear polarization was measured. This was the first time that these observations were made when the GRB was still bright and active. The source of the GRB was a possible black hole, within the Delphinus constellation, about 9 billion light-years (light travel distance) away (a redshift of z = 1.406). It had a fluence of 5.7×10−4 erg cm−2, and energy of 5 × 1054 erg. The burst lasted over 11 minutes (680 s), and was one of the most energetic bursts ever recorded.
GRB 190114C was an extreme gamma-ray burst explosion from a galaxy 4.5 billion light years away (z=0.4245; magnitude=15.60est) near the Fornax constellation, that was initially detected in January 2019. The afterglow light emitted soon after the burst was found to be tera-electron volt radiation from inverse Compton emission, identified for the first time. According to the astronomers, "We observed a huge range of frequencies in the electromagnetic radiation afterglow of GRB 190114C. It is the most extensive to date for a gamma-ray burst." Also, according to other astronomers, "light detected from the object had the highest energy ever observed for a GRB: 1 Tera electron volt (TeV) -- about one trillion times as much energy per photon as visible light"; another source stated, "the brightest light ever seen from Earth [to date].".
GRB 221009A was an extraordinarily bright and very energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) jointly discovered by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on October 9, 2022. The gamma-ray burst was ten minutes long, but was detectable for more than ten hours following initial detection. Despite being around two billion light-years away, it was powerful enough to affect Earth's atmosphere, having the strongest effect ever recorded by a gamma-ray burst on the planet. The peak luminosity of GRB 221009A was measured by Konus-Wind to be ~ 2.1 × 1047 W and by Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor to be ~ 1.0 × 1047 W over its 1.024s interval. A burst as energetic and as close to Earth as 221009A is thought to be a once-in-10,000-year event. It was the brightest and most energetic gamma-ray burst ever recorded, with some dubbing it the BOAT, or Brightest Of All Time.
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