May 25, 2011 - Discover Blog
That is GRB 090429B, a gamma-ray burst (or just GRB to those who want to sound nerdcool), the catastrophic and extremely violent detonation of a massive star. Think of it as a super-supernova, the death throes of a star that lived a short, hot, turbulent life. I wrote about them extensively in my book "Death from the Skies!", or you can get the details about how they form and why they’re so awesome in an earlier post.
Its distance is estimated to be a whopping 13.14 billion light years. If this holds up, it may be the single most distant object ever seen by humans.
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