Science & Technology Facilities Council | 2011 May 25
Massive explosion helps Warwick researcher spot Universe’s most distant objectAn international team, led by astronomers in the UK and US, has announced the discovery of what appears to be the most distant explosion, and possibly the most distant object, ever seen in the Universe.
The exploding star, known as a Gamma-ray Burst (GRB) was briefly as bright as several thousand galaxies (more than a million million times the brightness of the sun), which allowed it to be detected at an estimated distance of 13.14 billion light years (putting it 96% of the way to the edge of our observable Universe).
The research is presented in a paper by an international team of astronomers, with major contributions from UK scientists at the Universities of Warwick and Leicester, who receive grants from STFC. The research uses the Swift satellite, the Gemini North Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope and is accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
University of Warwick | 2011 May 25
Cosmic Explosion is New Candidate for Most Distant Object in the UniverseAn international team of UK and US astronomers have spotted the most distant explosion, and possibly the most distant object, ever seen in the Universe.
University of Warwick astronomer Dr Andrew Levan was one of the first members of that team to spot the exploding star, known as a Gamma-ray Burst (GRB), which was briefly as bright as several thousand galaxies (more than a million million times the brightness of the sun). This very bright explosion allowed it to be detected at an extreme estimated distance of 13.14 billion light years - putting it 96% of the way to the edge of Universe and making it most distant object ever seen.
The gamma-ray burst was first detected by NASA's Swift satellite in April 2009. The research team spent two years carrying out a careful examination of their data to see if the burst really was a record-breaker. “The more we examined this burst, the better it looked.” says Dr Andrew Levan.
Thanks to their extreme brightness, gamma-ray bursts can be detected by Swift and other satellite observatories even when they occur at distances of billions of light years. While the bursts themselves last for minutes at most, their fading "afterglow" light remains observable with large telescopes for days or even weeks. By performing a sophisticated analysis of this light, the research team were able to show that the burst most likely has a redshift (the means astronomers use to measure distance) of approximately 9.4. While there is some uncertainty due to the faintness of the source, this is significantly greater than the previous record holding GRB, which had a redshift of 8.2.
Dr Andrew Levan of the University of Warwick, one of the first people to observe the explosion and the second author of the paper, said: "The race to find distant objects stems from the desire to find and study the first stars and galaxies that formed in the Universe, in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.”
“By looking very far away, because the light takes so long on its journey to reach the Earth, astronomers are effectively able to look back in time to this early era. Unfortunately, the immense distances involved make this very challenging. There are different ways of finding such objects, looking at distant galaxies being the most obvious, but because galaxies are faint it is very difficult. GRB afterglows are so much brighter”.
The researchers used the Swift satellite, the Gemini North Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope.
"This GRB shows us that there is a lot of action going on in the Universe which we can't currently see," Said Professor Nial Tanvir, from the University of Leicester and the leader of the Hubble Space Telescope part of this research programme, "Our observations show us that even the Hubble Space Telescope is only seeing the tip of the iceberg in the distant Universe".
Swift is capable of finding some GRBs at distances corresponding to when the first stars are predicted in the Universe", said Prof Paul O'Brien a member of the Swift team at Leicester.
Penn State University | 2011 May 25
Betting on the Most Distant Gamma Ray Burst Ever SeenA gamma-ray burst detected by NASA's Swift satellite in April 2009 has been newly unveiled as a candidate for the most distant object in the universe. At an estimated distance of 13.14 billion light years, the burst lies far beyond any known quasar and could be more distant than any previously known galaxy or gamma-ray burst. Multiple lines of evidence in favor of a record-breaking distance for this burst, known as GRB 090429B for the 29 April 2009 date when it was discovered, are presented in a paper by an international team of astronomers led by former Penn State University graduate student Antonino Cucchiara, now at the University of California, Berkeley. The paper has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
The gigantic burst of gamma rays erupted from an exploding star when the universe was less than 4% of its present age, just 520 million years old, and less than 10% of its present size. "The galaxy hosting the progenitor star of GRB 090429B was truly one of the first galaxies in the universe," said Derek Fox, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a co-author of the paper. "Beyond the possible cosmic distance record, GRB 090429B illustrates how gamma-ray bursts can be used to reveal the locations of massive stars in the early universe and to track the processes of early galaxy and star formation that eventually led to the galaxy-rich cosmos we see around us today."
Gamma-ray bursts, the brightest explosions known, occur somewhere within the observable universe at a rate of about two per day. Thanks to their extreme brightness, gamma-ray bursts can be detected by Swift and other satellite observatories even when they occur at distances of billions of light years. While the bursts themselves last for minutes at most, their fading "afterglow" light remains observable from premier astronomical facilities for days to weeks. Detailed studies of the afterglow during this time, when feasible, allow astronomers to measure the distance to the burst.
These afterglow measurements were used to determine a cosmic distance record in 2009 for an earlier gamma-ray burst, GRB 090423 at a distance of 13.04 billion light years from Earth, making it temporarily the "most distant object in the universe." This record was surpassed by galaxy discoveries in 2010 and 2011 that pushed the cosmic frontier out to 13.07 billion light years, and potentially even further. "Our extreme estimate of the distance to GRB 090429B makes this a sort of 'revenge of the bursts,'" said Cucchiara. "A gamma-ray burst is once more contending for the title of most distant object in the cosmos -- beyond the previously known most-distant quasars and galaxies."
Less than a week after the record-setting GRB 090423 made headlines around the world, this new burst, GRB 090429B, appeared in the sky with suspiciously similar properties. As with the previous burst, GRB 090429B was a short-lived event, lasting less than 10 seconds, and automated Swift observations showed it to have a relatively faint X-ray afterglow. Cucchiara, then a graduate student at Penn State, woke up in the early morning hours to direct observations at the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, that he hoped would pin down the nature of this burst. Working with coauthors Andrew Levan of the University of Warwick, Nial Tanvir of the University of Leicester, and thesis supervisor Derek Fox of Penn State, Cucchiara found that, while the afterglow was visible in infrared observations, no optical light could be detected. This "drop out" behavior is a distinctive signature of the most-distant objects, and has been used for initial identification of all of the most-distant quasars, galaxies, and gamma-ray bursts.
Cucchiara requested an immediate spectrum of the GRB 090429B afterglow from the Gemini operators, which would have provided a definitive measurement of the distance to the burst. Unfortunately, just as the spectrum was about to be taken, clouds blew in over the summit of Mauna Kea and hid the afterglow from sight. By the next night, the afterglow was too faint to yield a useful spectrum, and over the following nights it faded from view completely. "It was frustrating to lose sight of this burst, but the hints we had were so exciting there was no chance of us letting it go," said Cucchiara, who presented an initial study of the burst as part of his doctoral thesis at Penn State.
Determined not to let GRB 090429B become "the burst that got away," the team spent two years carrying out a careful examination of their data to see if the burst is truly a candidate record-breaker, or might be a partially-obscured burst in a galaxy at a less dramatic distance. Importantly, this work has meant gathering new data -- deep observations with Gemini and the Hubble Space Telescope that would have revealed a galaxy at the burst position in any of the less-dramatic scenarios. This evidence, including the missing galaxy, indicates that the burst is extremely likely -- a 99.3-percent chance -- to be the most distant cosmic explosion, beyond the record set by GRB 090423. "Like the best politicians or talent-show contestants, the more we examined this burst, the better it looked," says Levan, the paper's second author.
Whether GRB 090429B is now the most distant object in the universe depends on several factors which are not precisely known. First, it must lie beyond the 13.07-billion-light-year distance to a galaxy reported in 2010 by a team of astronomers led by Matthew Lehnert at the Observatoire de Paris. This is very likely to be the case, at 98.9% probability, but is not certain. It also has to lie beyond the distance of a galaxy reported in 2011 by a team of astronomers led by Rychard Bouwens of U.C. Santa Cruz. This could be either easy or hard: The Bouwens team estimates that there is a 20% chance their galaxy is not a record breaker at all, but simply a faint galaxy at a relatively modest distance; on the other hand, if the Bouwens galaxy is a record-breaker, it is very distant indeed, from 13.11 to 13.28 billion light years away, and there is only a 4.8% chance that GRB 090429B is more distant than that. Overall, and treating these uncertainties as perfectly understood, there is a 23% chance that GRB 090429B is now the most distant known object in the Universe, the astronomers said.
With better luck, or more advanced facilities, it should be possible in the future to use the bright afterglows of bursts like GRB 090423 and GRB 090429B to explore the conditions of star and galaxy formation at these early cosmic epochs in detail. "Discovering extremely distant bursts is pretty fun," says Fox, "but we suspect there is a whole lot more information in the bursts, waiting for us, that we have yet to access."
Gemini Observatory | 2011 May 25
A Photometric Redshift of z ~ 9.4 for GRB 090429B - A Cucchiara et alExtreme Distance Determined with Gemini Observatory Images
In a game of cosmological one-upmanship, what is likely the most distant gamma ray burst (GRB) ever detected could be presenting humanity with a glimpse back to within about half a billion years of the Big Bang. "Like any finding of this sort there are uncertainties,” said the study's principal investigator Antonino Cucchiara. “However, if I were in Vegas, I would never bet against the odds that this is the most distant GRB ever seen and we estimate that there is even a 23% chance that it is the most distant object ever observed in the universe."[attachment=0]GRB090429B.jpg[/attachment]
A unique set of images from the Gemini North telescope in Hawai‘i clearly reveals the infrared afterglow of this powerful burst. More importantly, the data allowed the researchers to estimate its distance with a relatively high degree of certainty, placing it near the edge of the observable universe.
The finding, announced today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston Massachusetts, follows the evolution of a gamma ray burst (GRB 090429B) discovered by NASA's Swift satellite in April of 2009. GRBs like this one are a consequence of the deaths of massive stars, with an initial brief burst of high-energy emission gradually fading to an afterglow of light at other wavelengths. The subsequent afterglow was detected only at infrared wavelengths using the Gemini North telescope.
This result follows on the heels of other announcements by astronomers over the past few years that have extended the edge of the observable universe and pushed the depth of our vision deeper and deeper into the past by looking at both GRBs and galaxies.
Astronomers quantify large distances in terms of redshift, “z” where higher values of z indicate greater distance and greater lookback time into the early universe. The previous GRB record holder has an estimated redshift or z value of around 8.2, with GRB 090429B estimated at 9.4. Other galaxies at comparable or even larger redshifts may have already been detected, although some of their distance estimates are uncertain.
The research team, led by former Penn State University graduate student Antonino Cucchiara (now at the University of California at Berkeley), marshaled the extreme vision of Gemini and other large ground- and space-based telescopes to understand the object. According to Cucchiara, “Gemini was the right telescope, in the right place, at the right time. The data from Gemini was instrumental in allowing us to reach the conclusion that the object is likely the most distant GRB ever seen.” If the team is correct, this light embarked on its journey some 13.1 billion years ago or about 520 million years after the Big Bang – surprisingly close to the advent of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Additionally, this GRB appears to be normal, leading to the conclusion that it is not the consequence of the very first generation of stars formed in the universe. The implication is that the early, extremely young universe was already a busy star factory.
Reaching the conclusion that GRB 090429B is so distant was not easy and is one reason it has taken two years for this result to be announced. “Ideally we would have gathered a spectrum to measure the distance precisely, but we were foiled at the last minute when the weather took a turn for the worse on Mauna Kea. Since GRB afterglows fade so quickly, we never got a second chance,” said Derek Fox, Cucchiara’s advisor for his graduate research at Penn State University.
However, by using the existing data from Gemini and combining it in innovative ways with wider-field images from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (also on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea), the team was able to estimate the redshift of GRB 090429B with a high degree of confidence. “Also, the fact that we were never able to detect anything in the spot where we saw the afterglow in the Gemini data gave us the missing link in converging on this extremely high redshift estimate,” said Cucchiara. “We looked with Gemini, the Hubble Space Telescope and also with the Very Large Telescope in Chile and never saw anything once the afterglow faded. This means that this GRB's host galaxy is so distant that it couldn’t be seen with any existing telescopes. Because of this, and the information provided by the Swift satellite, our confidence is extremely high that this event happened very, very early in the history of our universe.”
- Astrophysical Journal 736(1) 7 (2011 July 20) DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/736/1/7
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1105.4915 > 25 May 2011 (v1), 31 May 2011 (v3)