Edge of the universe: Death throes of dying star spotted 13 billion light years away

Astronomers have snapped a picture of the most distant object ever seen in the universe - a titanic burst of energy from a dying star 13 billion light years away.

The 'gamma ray burst' is so far away that its light has taken almost the entire age of the universe to reach us.

When the light began its journey, travelling at 186,000 miles per second, only 640 million years had passed since the Big Bang that marked the dawn of creation.


A titanic burst of energy from a dying star 13 billion light years away has been spotted (centre) from Earth

The event, designated GRB 090423, was first detected by the American space agency Nasa's Swift satellite, which is designed to spot gamma ray bursts.

After Swift recorded an initial blast of gamma and X-rays, ground-based telescopes swivelled to aim at the same point in the sky and observed a fading afterglow of infra-red light.

Scientists believe the burst was caused by a massive star collapsing and exploding at the end of its life.

Dr Andrew Levan, from the University of Warwick, a member of the international team investigating the object, said: 'At its most basic level, this discovery tells us that there were massive stars at this moment in cosmic history, but equally importantly we can use events like this to probe how the universe evolves when it is less than five per cent of its current age.'

Colleague Dr Nial Tanvir, from the University of Leicester, said: 'This is the most remote gamma-ray burst ever detected, and also the most distant object ever discovered - by some way.'


An artist's impression of a dying star exploding to produce a gamma ray burst

Swift detected a 10 second burst of gamma rays from GRB 090423 at 8.55 am UK time on April 23.

Twenty minutes later the United Kingdom Infra-red Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, located a source of light beyond the optical range at the same spot pinpointed by Swift. This was the infra-red 'afterglow' of the gamma ray burst.

Other ground-based telescopes around the world were rapidly  aimed in the same direction and confirmed the discovery.

When scientists calculated the afterglow's 'redshift' - the degree to which the wavelength of light from the object was shifted in the red direction - they realised the gamma ray burst had broken all distance records.

US astronomer Professor Edo Berger, from the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who also studied the burst, said: 'I have been chasing gamma-ray bursts for a decade, trying to find such a spectacular event.

'We now have the first direct proof that the young universe was teeming with exploding stars and newly-born black holes only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.'

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe.

Most are believed to occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As their cores collapse into a black hole or super-dense neutron star, gas jets - driven by processes not fully understood - punch through the star and blast violently into space.

There they strike gas previously shed by the star and heat it to generate short-lived afterglows.
