Shedding Light on Dark Gamma Ray Bursts

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Very cool image...

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/image...ture_1388.html

Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's biggest explosions, capable of producing so much light that ground-based telescopes easily detect it billions of light-years away. Yet, for more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the nature of so-called dark bursts, which produce gamma rays and X-rays but little or no visible light. They make up roughly half of the bursts detected by NASA's Swift satellite since its 2004 launch.

Using one of the world's largest optical telescopes, the Keck I in Hawaii, researchers looked for unknown galaxies at the locations of 14 Swift-discovered dark bursts.

In this artist's concept, dense knots of dust in otherwise normal galaxies dim the light of a dark gamma-ray burst (center). The dust absorbs most or all of a burst's visible light but not higher-energy X-rays and gamma rays.

Image Credit NASA/Swift/Aurore Simonnet

[DJDD]

great image.
i like the screw-shaped clouds.

[bojan]

This image doesn not look natural.. it seems it was edited a bit (?)

EDIT: of course.. I have just read the caption..

"Shedding Light on Dark Gamma Ray BurstsGamma-ray bursts are the universe's biggest explosions, capable of producing so much light that ground-based telescopes easily detect it billions of light-years away. Yet, for more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the nature of so-called dark bursts, which produce gamma rays and X-rays but little or no visible light. They make up roughly half of the bursts detected by NASA's Swift satellite since its 2004 launch.

Using one of the world's largest optical telescopes, the Keck I in Hawaii, researchers looked for unknown galaxies at the locations of 14 Swift-discovered dark bursts.

In this artist's concept, dense knots of dust in otherwise normal galaxies dim the light of a dark gamma-ray burst (center). The dust absorbs most or all of a burst's visible light but not higher-energy X-rays and gamma rays.

Image Credit NASA/Swift/Aurore Simonnet"

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Bojan - thanks for your correction. It appears that NASA has updated their blurb since they posted - it was NOT altered by me. The heavy red text is a nice touch, but a PM might have fixed it...

Being involved in advertising, I consider every presentation an "image", as such, and do not generally qualify them as having been altered or, as in this case, labelled as merely an "artist's conception". To be honest, it never even ocurred to me that this example might be construed as anything but...

[DJDD]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

To be honest, it never even ocurred to me that this example might be construed as anything but...

I did not see the "artist's conception" in the caption when I looked but was originally was going to write that it looked a bit...well...like a painting...especially the jets. but then i also thought, what do I know...


still like the image, though...