The Swift satellite detected a intense gamma-ray burst, GRB 080319B at 6:13 UTC, March 19th, 2008. The optical afterglow of the burst may have reached naked-eye visibility (magnitude ~ 5.7) for a brief few moments. Position(2000): RA: 14 31 40.98 , Dec: +36 18 8.8 Read more
Brightest light ever seen by astronomers The brightest burst of light ever seen - which peaked at a few hundred million billion times the brightness of our Sun - has been witnessed by astronomers. Read more
It would seem to me this could have been one of those things that happens when a black hole explodes.
Hum, i think it was probably just a stellar core collapse. I suspect it was bright because the blast was `polar` , and we were in the right direction to see the full polar jet.
I don`t know. UPDATED: “A long gamma-ray burst within 6500 light years of Earth could produce enough radiation to strip away the ozone layer and cause a mass, or even total, extinction “ Source New Scientist, 30 July 2005
NASA measured the explosion as having occurred 7.5 billion years ago, before Earth was formed and more than halfway across the visible universe. Read more
