moon phases

On January 23, 1999 the Hubble space Telescope imaged the rapidly fading visible-light fireball from the most powerful cosmic explosion recorded to date. For a brief moment the light from the blast was equal to the radiance of 100 million billion stars.

The blast had already faded to one four-millionth of its original brightness when Hubble made observations on February 8 and 9. Space Telescope captured the fading fireball embedded in a galaxy located 2/3 of the way to the horizon of the observable universe.

Images of galaxies display a soft, cloud-like mass of suns light years apart - as individually indistinguishable as grains of sand on a beach as seen from an airplane. Identifying an individual star from a galactic cloud is like visually separating a water molecule from a vapor cloud overhead. Consider that when viewing the photo to the right of the fading nova.

Space Telescope's observations further support the idea that these mysterious powerful explosions happen where vigorous star formation takes place. Gamma-ray bursts may be created by the mergers of a pair of neutron stars or black holes, or a hypernova, a theorized type of exceptionally violent exploding star.