Astronomy Journal Entry
Astronomers See Most Distant Object (May 11, 2009)
View of smudge from gamma ray burst from 13 billion years ago. Gemini Observatory.
Astronomers snapped pictures of the most distant object ever seen anywhere in the universe. The faint smudge is from a gamma ray burst 13 billion light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, or roughly six trillion miles (10 trillion km). The pictures were taken by an infrared-sensing telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii.
Gamma rays are the most powerful type of electromagnetic radiation. A gamma ray burst results when a massive star burns up its fuel supply and collapses to form either a dense neutron star or a black hole.
The burst Gemini observed happened a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the "mother of all explosions" marking the birth of the universe nearly 14 billion years ago. All visible light from the explosion was absorbed by clouds of hydrogen gas in the early stages of the universe. But the infrared radiation or heat energy of the event remained. The images offer proof that the "baby" universe was filled with exploding stars and black holes.
