A record burst of gamma rays, the most powerful explosion ever recorded to date, was recently observed by several professional and amateur telescopes, including those of the Oukaimeden Observatory, part of Cadi Ayyad University, following a alert sent by NASA’s SWIFT telescope.
According to a statement by Tarik Khala, vice president of the Atlas Dark Sky Morocco institution, this phenomenon was detected, on the morning of October 9, 2022, by space X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes, in particular the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope of NASA, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Wind spacecraft. The Oukaimeden Observatory’s MOSS and HAO telescopes observed a flash of light, which was emitted at an estimated distance of 2.4 billion light-years from Earth, he noted, adding that this phenomenon was probably the result of the birth of a black hole.
Investigations are still in progress to find out more about this phenomenon, which will be the subject of a future circular from the GRANDMA network.
The Oukaimeden observatory joined the GRANDMA network a few months ago and began observations last April with the MOSS Telescope, the OWL Telescope of the South Korean Space Agency and the telescopes of the Moroccan Association of Astrophotography, all operating on the Oukaimeden site.