The visible fireball from a titanic explosion in deep space, called a gamma-ray burst, blazes in the center of this image, taken with the CCD camera (Charge Coupled Device) on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), a new instrument on Hubble Space Telescope. The burst...
The visible fireball from a titanic explosion in deep space, called a gamma-ray burst, blazes in the center of this image, taken with the Hubble telescope's imaging spectrograph.
The burst occurred on May 8, 1997, and Hubble observations to acquire the fading fireball were made on June 2. No accompanying object, such as a host galaxy, can be found near the burst. This result adds to the puzzlement over the source of these enigmatic explosions, because a previous Hubble picture of the visible glow from another gamma-ray burst identified a potential host galaxy.
