Somethin's blowin' up in Aries...

"Scientists using NASA's SWIFT satellite have detected a new kind of cosmic explosion. The event appears to be a precursor to a supernova, which is expected to reach peak brightness in one week [from Feb. 24th -- Ed.].

"Scores of satellites and ground-based telescopes are now trained on the sight, watching and waiting. Amateur astronomers in the northern hemisphere with a good telescope in dark skies can also view it.

"The explosion has the trappings of a gamma-ray burst, the most distant and powerful type of explosion known. Yet this explosion, detected on February 18, was about 25 times closer and 100 times longer than the typical gamma-ray burst. And it possesses characteristics never seen before.

"'This is totally new and unexpected,' said Neil Gehrels, Swift principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. 'This is the type of unscripted event in our nearby universe that we hoped Swift could catch.'

"The explosion, called GRB 060218 after the date it was discovered, originated in a star-forming galaxy about 440 million light-years away toward the constellation Aries. This is the second-closest gamma-ray burst ever detected, if indeed it is a true burst.

"The burst of gamma rays lasted for nearly 2,000 seconds; most bursts last a few milliseconds to tens of seconds. The explosion was surprisingly dim, however, suggesting that scientists might be viewing the event slightly off-axis. Yet this is just one explanation on the table. The standard theory for gamma-ray bursts is that the high-energy light is beamed in our direction.

"'There are still many unknowns,' said John Nousek, the Swift mission director at Penn State University, State College, Penn. 'This could be a new kind of burst, or we might be seeing a gamma-ray burst from an entirely different angle. This off-angle glance -- a profile view, perhaps -- has given us an entirely new approach to studying star explosions. Had this been farther away, we would have missed it.'"