GRB 080913 was a

gamma-ray burst In gamma-ray astronomy, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are extremely energetic events occurring in distant Galaxy, galaxies which represent the brightest and most powerful class of explosion in the universe. These extreme Electromagnetic radiation, ele ...

(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 The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is an astronomical facility operated since 1998 by the European Southern Observatory, located on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It consists of four individual telescopes, each equipped with ...

. At 12.8 billion

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astr ...

s and

redshift In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and increase in frequency and e ...

of 6.7, the burst was the most distant GRB observed until

GRB 090423 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, m ...

on April 23, 2009. This stellar explosion occurred around 825 million years after the

Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...

References

External links

IAUC

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grb 080913 Eridanus (constellation) 080913 20080913 September 2008