Blue Supergiant Star Explosion

Swift's Christmas Burst From Blue Supergiant Star Explosion
Christmas Burst From Blue Supergiant Star Explosion
GRB 101225A, better known as the 'Christmas burst,' was an unusually long-lasting gamma-ray burst. Because its distance was not measured, astronomers came up with two radically different interpretations. In the first, a solitary neutron star in our own galaxy shredded and accreted an approaching comet-like body. In the second, a neutron star is engulfed by, spirals into and merges with an evolved giant star in a distant galaxy. Now, thanks to a measurement of the Christmas burst's host galaxy, astronomers have determined that it represented the collapse and explosion of a supergiant star hundreds of times larger than the sun.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
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