Massive gamma burst gives us rare glimpse of galaxy 12 bn light years away

At 10:49pm Western Australian time on February 2 this year, cosmic gamma rays hit the NASA satellite, Swift, orbiting the Earth.

Within seconds of the detection, an alert was automatically sent to the University of WA’s Zadko Telescope. It swung into robotic action, taking images of the sky location in the constellation Ophiuchus.

What emerged from the blackness, where nothing was seen before, was a rapidly brightening “optical transient”, which is something visible in the sky for a brief period of time.

The event, named GRB170202, was a very energetic gamma ray burst (