Visible light from a source located 10 billion light-years away from Earth was captured by three telescopes on the night of June 19-20, 2021. Two of them – robotic telescopes – are operated by Czech institutions – D50 located in Ondřejov is managed by the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ASÚ), the other, FRAM-ORM, is located on the Spanish island La Palma. The third telescope, Mini-MegaTORTORA, is installed in Nizhny Archiz, Russia. An international team published a study of this extraordinary source in the May issue of the journal Nature Astronomy.
The gamma-ray burst (GRB) of June 19, 2021 is most likely of the type where a massive star enters the final stages of its evolution and collapses under its own gravity. In the event of a collapse, it is thought to lead to the formation of a rapidly rotating black hole, onto which material from the stellar envelope then falls. This process causes the black hole to create two powerful, narrow jets that pierce the remaining stellar envelope. Jets last several tens of seconds, during which observers on Earth have found that they are the most energetic sources from space.
Source / more: ASU webpage
