File:A blast from the past (potw2240a).jpg
Original file (1,041 × 1,040 pixels, file size: 123 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
Captions
Summary[edit]
DescriptionA blast from the past (potw2240a).jpg |
English: Do you see that small red spot? That’s an extremely distant explosion in the early universe imaged by the X-Shooter instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). This light is from a gamma-ray burst (GRB), one of the most luminous and puzzling phenomena in the universe. In September 2021, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a bright source of gamma rays in this area of the sky. Once the initial bright flash of a GRB has died down, the afterglow shines at longer wavelengths like visible or infrared light. But they fade very quickly, so astronomers must react fast! A team of astronomers led by Andrea Rossi at INAF in Bologna observed the aftermath of the GRB with a number of telescopes around the world, including several ESO instruments on the VLT and the robotic telescopes REM and GROND hosted at ESO’s La Silla Observatory.Besides taking images with X-Shooter, the team also used this instrument to obtain spectra. This was key to discover that the burst originates from an extremely distant galaxy, when the universe was only 6% of its current age, making this one of the most distant GBRs ever found. The origins of gamma-ray bursts however remain a bit of a mystery. According to Rossi’s team, this particular GRB put out so much energy that it was probably powered by material falling onto a black hole or (less likely) a magnetar –– a neutron star with a very strong magnetic field. With ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope, properties of bursts like these and their progenitors can be studied in greater detail, and their elusive origin can be uncovered. |
||
Date | 3 October 2022 (upload date) | ||
Source |
|
||
Author | ESO/A. Rossi et al. | ||
Other versions |
|
Licensing[edit]
This media was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public ESO website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week, blog posts and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available. | |
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
|
File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
current | 11:03, 1 July 2023 | 1,041 × 1,040 (123 KB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://cdn.eso.org/images/large/potw2240a.jpg via Commons:Spacemedia |
You cannot overwrite this file.
File usage on Commons
The following page uses this file:
Metadata
This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.
Credit/Provider | ESO/A. Rossi et al. |
---|---|
Source | European Southern Observatory |
Short title |
|
Image title |
|
Usage terms |
|
Date and time of data generation | 06:00, 3 October 2022 |
Software used | Adobe Photoshop 23.5 (Windows) |
File change date and time | 16:39, 23 September 2022 |
Date and time of digitizing | 17:04, 12 September 2022 |
Date metadata was last modified | 18:39, 23 September 2022 |
Unique ID of original document | xmp.did:f14fd357-70ae-e84c-b455-a534716dced8 |
Keywords | GRB 210905A |
Contact information |
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Garching bei München, None, D-85748 Germany |
IIM version | 4 |