In the hours after this unusual gamma-ray burst was discovered, astrophysicists rushed to learn more.
This evidence is suggestive that rather than a typical supernova, this was actually a gamma-ray burst.
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But gamma-ray telescopes are also confused by charged particles trapped in the earth's magnetic field.
X-ray and gamma-ray spectrometer, a magnetometer and a laser range-finder, as well as good, old-fashioned digital photography.
To help provide the answer, officials are using gamma-ray and neutron devices that can peer into containers.
Gamma-ray emitters bounce atomic particles off rock formations to see the size, density and flow of oil reservoirs.
Thus, the shape and metals of W49B show the explosion has the jets we associate with gamma-ray bursts.
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Too bright, it appears, for any of the existing theories of gamma-ray bursts.
Just nine days later, the bright nearby burst happened, leading to the Fermi detection of the highest energy gamma-ray ever.
To detect and explain this previously unknown type of gamma-ray burst is a real achievement for the University of Warwick.
BBC: NASA's Swift satellite observes massive supernova stars
"I'm in shock and awe at how bright it is, " said Julie McEnery, project scientist for the Fermi gamma-ray telescope.
Since its launch in 2004, Swift has detected over 700 gamma-ray bursts.
BBC: NASA's Swift satellite observes massive supernova stars
But there is still controversy about what causes them, and that will not be resolved until the gamma-ray window is clear again.
Dr Andrew Levan from the University of Warwick says these longer gamma-ray bursts are actually caused by really, really big stars going supernova.
BBC: NASA's Swift satellite observes massive supernova stars
But for a short-lived event such as a gamma-ray burst it means that the same blast may become visible again in the future.
Had it been situated in a much more distant galaxy -- as many gamma-ray bursts are -- its signal would have been relatively feeble.
But they are particularly associated with events called gamma-ray bursts, which are the biggest explosions yet detected in the universe brighter than a billion suns.
Almost as an afterthought, it had a gamma-ray detector bolted on.
Compelling independent corroboration would come from a spacecraft that can see the burst of gamma-ray radiation expected to accompany the cataclysmic events that produce gravitational waves.
By sheer coincidence, a programme to study it had just begun, so dozens of the world's telescopes - from visible to radio to gamma-ray - were watching.
Researchers working on the Nasa mission say the extraordinary longevity of the gamma-ray burst may force them to change their theories about how these colossal blasts work.
Early results from Schaefer's study of the movements of gamma-ray bursts suggest that dark energy is different far out in space, and therefore way back in time.
The work was reported in mid-October by Jay Norris, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, at the Fifth Huntsville (Alabama) Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium.
X-rays from three of them, in between their gamma-ray outbursts.
And if a few more such events can be found, that should settle once and for all whether gamma-ray bursts are merely little local upheavals or the biggest noises in creation.
Telescopes on other planets in those directions could see those jets, and we might see the exploding stars as supernovae, but we don't see the bright gamma-ray flashes from jets beamed away from us.
"This is the most spectacular burst ever seen at high energy, " said Dr Valerie Connaughton, a scientist from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) instrument team.
"Dawn's crowning success at Vesta was the delivery of instruments that require proximity, exemplified by the gamma-ray and neutron measurements of Prettyman et al. yielding elemental abundances that unequivocally confirm the meteorite links, " Binzel wrote.
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