2 Types of Gamma Ray Bursts (IMAGE)
Caption
An artist's impression of the stars creating gamma-ray bursts. The background blue star is the progenitor of a standard long duration gamma-ray burst. A so-called Wolf-Rayet star, it has a mass ten or more times the mass of the sun but has a comparable size. The foreground star is the suggested progenitor of an ultra-long gamma-ray burst (GRB). It has a mass of perhaps 20 times the sun but is up to a thousand times larger. In both cases the GRB is produced by a jet punching through the star, but in the case of the ultra-long GRBs the much larger size of the star creates a much longer lived jet. Image copyright Mark A. Garlick, used with permission by the University of Warwick
Credit
Image copyright Mark A. Garlick, used with permission by the University of Warwick
Usage Restrictions
Please note that this image can only be used in connection with this research, not to illustrate stories on gamma-ray bursts in general.
License
Licensed content