Just before 2000 UTC on 14 January, the Fermi and Swift satellites detected a spike of gamma rays from the constellation Fornax. The missions alerted the astronomical community to the location of the burst, dubbed GRB 190114C. Ground-based facilities detected radiation with up to a trillion times the energy of visible light from the gamma-ray burst.

The illustration above shows the set-up for the most common type of GRB. The core of a massive star (left) has collapsed and formed a black hole. This “engine” drives a jet of particles that moves through the collapsing star and out into space at nearly the speed of light. The so-called prompt emission, which typically lasts a minute or less, may arise from the jet’s interaction with gas near the newborn black hole and from collisions between shells of fast-moving internal shockwaves within the jet itself. The afterglow emission occurs as the leading edge of the jet sweeps through the surroundings creating an external shock wave, and emitting radiation across a broad spectrum. That may continue for months to years in the case of radio and visible light and for hours at the highest gamma-ray energies yet observed.

Image Credit: NASA

Note: My principal contribution to the Swift satellite was the design and testing of the power regulation system for the X-ray detectors in Burst Alert Telescope.