GRB 080319B

Common card · No. 287538

GRB 080319B was a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected by the Swift satellite at 06:12 UTC on March 19, 2008. The burst set a new record for the farthest object that was observable with the naked eye: it had a peak visual apparent magnitude of 5.8 and remained visible to human eyes for approximately 30 seconds. The magnitude was brighter than 9.0 for approximately 60 seconds. If viewed from 1 AU (the average distance from Earth to the Sun) away, it would have had a peak apparent magnitude of −67.57 (21 quadrillion times brighter than the Sun seen from Earth). It had an absolute magnitude of −38.6, beaten by GRB 220101A with −39.4 in 2023.

Read on Wikipedia · Image NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al., Public domain