Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Detected by NASA Satellites [VIDEO]

NASA satellites detected a powerful gamma ray burst from a dying star in a distant galaxy on April. 27, which scientists say is the brightest burst ever recorded.

Captured on April 27 by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope, this brightest cosmic explosion dubbed as GRB 130427A, challenges the previous theoretical knowledge of the functioning of gamma-ray bursts that are considered to the most energetic form of light. The first three seconds of the gamma ray burst were unique.

"We expect to see an event like this only once or twice a century, so we're fortunate it happened when we had the appropriate collection of sensitive space telescopes with complementary capabilities available to see it," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington, in a press statement.

These powerful bright explosions called the gamma-ray bursts occur when the center of an enormous star loses its entire nuclear fuel and collapses under its weight and forms a black hole. In this case the collapse caused a shock wave in the black hole throwing out glowing jets of particles.  The gamma rays are produced with energies that are nearly 50,000 times the energy of the visible light.

"The spectacular results from Fermi GBM show that our widely accepted picture of MeV gamma rays from internal shock waves is woefully inadequate," said Rob Preece, a Fermi team member at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who led the GBM study.

The optical flash was also detected by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. They noticed that the flash peaked at magnitude 7 on the astronomical brightness scale. The time when the optical flash peaked, Fermi's LAT saw a spike in GeV gamma rays that reached 95 GeV , indicating it to be the most powerful and energetic light ever detected from a burst.

This event was the first detection made by NASA's new X-ray observatory -the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR).