Lasting just over 200 seconds, this one required exceedingly swift sky-work, for the discovery.

A collaboration across the globe swung into action — to pinpoint the source on the sky and track how its brightness changed (“like a seed dropped by a sky-bird, in a distant wood” — and our understanding is changed… for good).

These observations in the gamma-ray, X-ray, optical, infrared, and radio showed that the optical/infrared counterpart was faint, evolved quickly, and rapidly became very red — all the hallmarks of a kilonova. [Like a comet pulled from orbit… or a stream that meets a boulder… halfway through the wood….] Here’s the NASA run-down on it all:

…A team of scientists has used multiple space and ground-based telescopes, including… NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, to observe an exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst, GRB 230307A, and identify the neutron star merger that generated an explosion that created the burst. [The next-gen space ‘scope] helped scientists detect the chemical element tellurium in the explosion’s aftermath….

Other elements near tellurium on the periodic table — like iodine, which is needed for much of life on Earth — are also likely to be present among the kilonova’s ejected material. A kilonova is an explosion produced by a neutron star merging with either a black hole or with another neutron star….

GRB 230307A is particularly remarkable. First detected by Fermi in March, it is the second brightest GRB observed in over 50 years of observations, about 1,000 times brighter than a typical gamma-ray burst that Fermi observes. It also lasted for 200 seconds, placing it firmly in the category of long duration gamma-ray bursts, despite its different origin.

“This burst is way into the long category. It’s not near the border. But it seems to be coming from a merging neutron star,” added Eric Burns, a co-author of the paper and member of the Fermi team at Louisiana State University….

Now you know — and like a hand-print on my heart… it captures LSU, too… grinning, ear to ear… 20 years on, with “Wicked“, at this all-hallows time of year, here too.

नमस्ते