A Stellar Explosion You Could See on Earth
![The image has two views of the same portion of sky. On the left, the X-ray light is shown in yellows and oranges like a bright ball of fire on a black background. On the right is the optical view with several balls of white light showing a starry background. In the center of the image is one of the balls of light but surrounded by an orange and green halo.](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/218810main_grb_20080320_-detail.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
March 21, 2008
Credit | NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al. |
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Historical Date | March 21, 2008 |
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NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory imaged the extremely luminous afterglow of explosion GRB 080319B using its X-ray Telescope (left) and Optical/Ultraviolet Telescope (right). This was the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen at the time.
More information: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/brightest_grb.html