GRB 101225A
GRB 101225A, also known as the "Christmas burst", was a cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010. The gamma-ray emission lasted at least 28 minutes, which is unusually long. Follow-up observations of the burst's afterglow by the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories were unable to determine the object's distance using spectroscopic methods.

In papers published in the journal "Nature", two different groups of astronomers proposed different theories about the event's origin. Sergio Campana's group proposes that the event was caused by a comet crashing onto a neutron star within our own galaxy. Christina Thöne's group prefers a more conventional supernova mechanism, involving a merger between a helium star and a neutron star at a distance of about 5.5 billion light years from Earth.
Q23548
NASA
Concept
Q837488
Swift observatory
MISC
Q11523
gamma-ray
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Q22247
burst's afterglow
Concept
Q2513
Hubble Space Telescope
MISC
Q180445
Nature
MEDIA
Q3559
comet
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Q4202
neutron star
Concept
Q3937
supernova
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Q4202
neutron star
Concept
Q5514425
GRB 101225A
DIS
2010-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
2010
DATE
+28^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
28
NUMBER
+5.5^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
5.5
NUMBER
site of astronomical discovery
duration
instance of