In October 2022, an extremely bright flash caught the attention of the Gemini South telescope in Chile. It was quickly determined to be the brightest ever seen, hence its nickname: the Brightest Of All Time . Now, a group of researchers has examined the event with the Webb Space Telescope and concluded that the BOAT’s cause was a supernova: an explosive and brilliant death of a star.
The signal wasn’t particularly bright, indicating that the supernova that yielded the brightest gamma ray burst ever seen wasn’t superlative itself. “This event is particularly exciting because some had hypothesized that a luminous gamma-ray burst like the B.O.A.T. could make a lot of heavy elements like gold and platinum,” said study co-author Ashley Villar, an astrophysicist at Harvard University and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, in the release.