Dave wrote:

Kurt, you left out the most astounding bit from the news release; the estimated distance of the GRB. Yikes! . . . "A redshift of 0.94 translates into a distance of 7.5 billion light years, . . ."

Yep, particularly measured against the typical deep redshift object accessible by amateur telescopes - quaser 3C273 in Virgo at 1.9 billion light years. 3C273 should be well positioned in the next dark sky frame coming up on April 2. For the details, see McGaha2006: McGaha, J. March 2006. The Outer Limits: Observing Quasers at High Redshifts. S&T. 111(3):69-72 (List of quasers visible to amateurs). Here's uber-imager Anthony Ayiomamitis's image of 3C273: http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-DSO-QSO-3C273.htm 3C273 is a pretty underwhelming object that I did track down once to have a look at. I only liked it for the experience of have 2 billion year old photons hitting the eyeballs - light from a time when there were only single-celled anareobic bacteria battling it out with the newly evolved blue-green algea for whether there would be an oxygen-reducing or a oxygen-based atmosphere on the Earth. Too bad there wasn't any residual brightness to GRB080319B to see per Patrick's post. Most of the professional web posts described it as rapidly dimming. - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ