The death of a massive star across the universe affected lightning on Earth
A blast of light called GRB 221009A, detected in October 2022, was initially so bright it outshone our own galaxy. The glow was observed in gamma rays by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope ( 1 ). Images taken just an hour after the first flare by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory show rings of x-ray light scattered by dust inside our Milky Way galaxy ( 2 ). The afterglow from the burst was seen in infrared light ( 3 ) five days after the initial blast by the huge Gemini South telescope in Chile.(credit: NASA /Swift /A. Beardmore (University of Leicester) (2 ); International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA /B. O’Connor (UMD/GWU) and J. Rastinejad and W. Fong (Northwestern University); Image processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller, M. Zamani and D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab) (CC BY 4.0) ( 3 ))
