Most distant object in the universe spotted

[Soylent Brice]

Astronomers have spotted the most distant object yet confirmed in the universe – a self-destructing star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from Earth. It detonated just 640 million years after the big bang, around the end of the cosmic "dark ages", when the first stars and galaxies were lighting up space.

The object is a gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the brightest type of stellar explosion. GRBs occur when massive, spinning stars collapse to form black holes and spew out jets of gas at nearly the speed of light. These jets send gamma rays our way, along with "afterglows" at other wavelengths, which are produced when the jet heats up surrounding gas.

The burst, dubbed GRB 090423 for the date of its discovery last Thursday, was originally spotted by NASA's Swift satellite at 0755 GMT.

Within an hour, astronomers began training ground-based telescopes on the same patch of sky to study the burst's infrared afterglow. Some of the first observations were made on Mauna Kea in Hawaii with the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and the Gemini North telescope.



more: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17035-most-distant-object-in-the-universe-spotted.html

[DrDan]

1. it is astonishing the progress we have made in this area in the past hundred or so years

[BlueJazz]

2. At only 640 million years old, it must have been huge Star and/or...

...burning up it's fuel at an enormous rate.
640 millions years is just a Baby in "star life"

Anybody else have another explanation ??

:)

[Geoff R. Casavant]

3. Nope, you're spot on.

The earliest stars were all giants, burning up and going nova after just a few hundred million years.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. It is visible from 13.1 billion light years away. Yes, that's huge

All I can say is :wow:

[VWolf]

5. Wow. I wonder what the redshift is on that one.

[pokerfan]

6. z = 8.2

:wow:

The most distant observed gamma ray burst is GRB 080913, which had a redshift of 6.7. Observations of GRB 090423 suggest redshift 8.2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift#Highest_redshifts