This is a followup to my previous post The Star.
The most powerful explosion ever observed may have been even more powerful than first thought. Nearly three weeks after the bright ‘gamma-ray burst’ occurred, it is still outshining its host galaxy, dumbfounding astronomers with its amazing longevity.
[…]
For a brief period on 19 March, it was easily the most distant object visible to the naked eye, lying thousands of times farther than the nearby Triangulum Galaxy, which normally holds that title. It was intrinsically 2.5 million times brighter than the next brightest explosion, a supernova that occurred in 2005.
—David Shiga, Why is the universe’s brightest blast still blazing?, at NewScientist.com
image credit: NewScientist.com
