Title: Gamma-Ray Bursts from a Safe Distance Andy Fruchter StScI Abstract: Gamma-Ray Bursts are explosions of unrivalled brilliance. They can be bright enough to be seen across cosmological distances with only a pair of binoculars, and can appear to emit the energy of the rest mass of the sun in high-energy photons in a matter of seconds. I will show evidence that most of these bursts, the so-called long, soft bursts, are produced by the collapse of extremely massive stars generally in faint, rapidly star-forming galaxies. This choice of host appears to be due to a preference (and perhaps necessity) of long-duration bursts being formed from sub-solar metallicity stars. The astrophysical origin of a smaller subset of bursts, the short, hard bursts, remains a mystery. It has long been suspected that these bursts are formed by the merger of double neutron star binaries. There is as yet no direct evidence for this hypothesis, however, and a naive interpretation of the data might even argue against this scenario. Short bursts do not appear to be too particular in their choice of hosts. They are found in both small star forming galaxies and ellipticals in Abell Clusters.