The Spitzer Space Telescope executed its first-ever High Impact Target of Opportunity (ToO) observation in order to catch a look at the aftermath of one of the most violent explosions in the universe. The ToO program was designed as a means to interrupt Spitzer's normal observation schedule in the case of an extraordinary event. On May 24th, 2005, the Swift satellite recorded the largest gamma-ray burst since its mission began. At 00:02:53 UT, the BAT instrument on the Swift spacecraft triggered (trigger=130088) and located GRB 050525. The BAT on-board calculated location is RA, Dec 278.144, +26.340 (18h 32m 35s +26d 20' 23") (J2000) with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 3-sigma, including systematic uncertainty).
A major scientific goal of the Swift mission is to catch these mysterious bursts of gamma rays (extremely high-energy light) in the act of exploding, and quickly relay the location of the burst to other telescopes around the world, as well as up in space. Once alerted, other observatories scan the sky around the area of the gamma-ray burst, looking for any signs of an afterglow from the explosion. Once identified, more detailed observations of the counterpart to the gamma-ray burst begin.
The Spitzer Space Telescope joined other observatories in looking for the afterglow of the gamma-ray burst, as well as any other evidence that would shed some light on these mysterious, monstrous explosions.
For just a few seconds, there was a visible glow strong enough to be seen with a good pair of binoculars. And for a day afterward, a dim afterglow remained that the giant telescopes were able to follow and analyze. With this new data, astronomers were able to take a spectrum of the glowing region, and measure its red shift. The implications of the red shift measurement were astounding. The measurement suggested that the afterglow was located in a galaxy ten billion light-years away, almost at the edge of the known universe. How bright is an object that you can physically see with binoculars from ten billion light-years away? In astronomical terms, whatever produced the gamma-ray burst shone with the light of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Suns, or the combined light of ten billion galaxies. In a real sense, that object out-shone the rest of the observable universe at the point of explosion, and produced conditions unseen since the Big Bang. Theories suggest the only event that could pack that much punch is the creation of a massive black hole, either by two neutron stars colliding, or the collapse of a very massive, rapidly rotating star (recently termed a collapsar).
