NASA - Swift Mission patch.
April 18, 2013
Image above: Artist's illustration of one model of the bright gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B. The explosion is highly beamed into two bipolar jets, with a narrow inner jet surrounded by a wider outer jet. Credit: NASA.
GRB 101225A, better known as the 'Christmas burst,' was an unusually long-lasting gamma-ray burst. Because its distance was not measured, astronomers came up with two radically different interpretations. In the first, a solitary neutron star in our own galaxy shredded and accreted an approaching comet-like body.
Swift's Christmas Burst From Blue Supergiant Star Explosion
In the second, a neutron star is engulfed by, spirals into and merges with an evolved giant star in a distant galaxy. Now, thanks to a measurement of the Christmas burst’s host galaxy, astronomers have determined that it represented the collapse and explosion of a supergiant star hundreds of times larger than the sun. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.
For more information about Swift Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/main/index.html
Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA.
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