NASA's high-energy Swift Observatory in orbit, cosmic gamma-ray bursts just keep setting new records. The most powerful one yet — in fact, the most violent event ever seen in the universe — flashed into view on the morning of March 19th, 2008. While Swift caught it from orbit, ground-based cameras on the hunt for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) saw a flare of visible light from the burst that peaked around magnitude 5.6.
The afterglow of GRB 080319B was imaged by Swift's X-ray Telescope (left) and Optical/Ultraviolet Telescope (right). It was, by far, the intrinsically brightest gamma-ray-burst afterglow ever seen by man-kind.
NASA / Swift / Stefan Immler and others
It is theorized that in the past gamma-ray bursts may have caused mass extinctions on Earth. More here.
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