October 1, 1996
A birthday is what happens when cosmic time briefly puts down the scale of eons and pays attention to a single human year.
BATSE's Biggest Gamma Ray Burst (Yet) Credit:
Birthday · October 1, 1996
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APOD published October 1, 1996. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Something big exploded but astronomers have no idea what. On September 24th, the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) onboard the orbiting Compton Gamma Ray Observatory recorded the most intense gamma ray burst in its five year history. During its mission, BATSE has recorded many gamma ray bursts - about one per day, but none were this powerful. Since their discovery over 25 years ago, the origin and even distance to gamma ray bursts remains hotly debated. Bursts are surely mysterious phenomena: they flash into existence suddenly dominating the entire gamma-ray sky, then typically fade in a few seconds never to be seen again. It is possible that this intense wave of gamma radiation caused other satellites to glitch and may even have been the cause of unusual noise in the Earth's atmosphere. If you know of such an anomaly, please report it.