January 30, 2004
The universe has spent billions of years making things that shine. On your birthday, we celebrate one of its quieter masterpieces.
X-Ray Rings Expand from a Gamma Ray Burst
Birthday · January 30, 2004
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
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APOD published January 30, 2004. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Why do x-ray rings appear to emanate from a gamma-ray burst? The surprising answer has little to do with the explosion itself but rather with light reflected off sheets of dust-laden gas in our own Milky Way Galaxy. GRB 031203 was a tremendous explosion -- a gamma-ray burst that occurred far across the universe with radiation just arriving in our Solar System last December 3. Since GRBs can also emit copious amounts of x-rays, a bright flash of x-rays likely arrived simultaneously with the gamma-radiation. In this case, the x-rays also bounced off two slabs of cosmic dust nearly 3500 light-years distant and created the unusual reflections. The longer path from the GRB, to the dust slab, to the XMM-Newton telescope caused the x-ray light echoes to arrive well after the GRB.