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To: Red Badger
Farther than the farthest star?...........maybe not

Close, but no cigar, exploding or otherwise. The galaxy is MORE THAN 13 billion light years away. The long-dead star that created the gamma-ray burst, a 'mere' 13 billion LY.

From your link...

"April 28, 2009: NASA's Swift satellite and an international team of astronomers have found a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old--less than five percent of its present age. The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen.

(snip)

The burst occurred at 3:55 a.m. EDT on April 23rd. Swift quickly pinpointed the explosion, allowing telescopes on Earth to target the burst before its afterglow faded away. Astronomers working in Chile and the Canary Islands independently measured the explosion's redshift. It was 8.2, smashing the previous record of 6.7 set by an explosion in September 2008. A redshift of 8.2 corresponds to a distance of 13.035 billion light years."

20 posted on 05/05/2015 11:43:10 AM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: Red Badger

...not so sure now. One article (excerpt just below) says the galaxy has a redshift of 7.7. While your NASA link for the gamma-ray burst claims a redshift of 8.2 for the GRB. That of course WOULD make it further than the galaxy.

“NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope also observed the unique galaxy. The W. M. Keck Observatory was used to obtain a spectroscopic redshift (z=7.7), extending the previous redshift record.”

http://astronomynow.com/2015/05/05/astronomers-set-a-new-galaxy-distance-record/
________________________

“The [gamma-ray] burst occurred at 3:55 a.m. EDT on April 23rd. Swift quickly pinpointed the explosion, allowing telescopes on Earth to target the burst before its afterglow faded away. Astronomers working in Chile and the Canary Islands independently measured the explosion’s redshift. It was 8.2, smashing the previous record of 6.7 set by an explosion in September 2008. A redshift of 8.2 corresponds to a distance of 13.035 billion light years.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/28apr_grbsmash/


22 posted on 05/05/2015 12:04:54 PM PDT by ETL (ALL (most?) of the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
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To: ETL

According to Wiki, it’s 13.095 LY away................

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_distant_astronomical_objects#cite_note-Tanvir2009-2


23 posted on 05/05/2015 12:14:59 PM PDT by Red Badger (Man builds a ship in a bottle. God builds a universe in the palm of His hand.............)
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