in interstellar space. Alexander and other scientists presented new findings about the BOAT at the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Waikoloa, Hawaii, on Tuesday.
To better understand the cause and properties of GRB 221009A, the UArizona astronomers took advantage of various telescopes capable of observing in multiple wavelengths, including Steward Observatory’s Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham and the MMT on Mount Hopkins. X-rays from the initial flash of GRB 221009A could be detected for weeks as dust in our galaxy scattered the light back to Earth. This resulted in the appearance of an extraordinary set of expanding rings. Images captured over 12 days by the X-ray Telescope aboard NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory were combined to make this movie, shown here in arbitrary colors. Credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore
“When we see the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, we expect to see a bright supernova associated with it,” Shrestha said. “We found that there was no clear signal indicating the presence of supernova features in our data. This is a puzzling discovery, as it is well-established that long GRBs come from the explosion of massive stars.”