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A new kind of cosmic explosion, catalogued as GRB 060218, has been spotted in Earth's celestial neighbourhood, scientists report.
The blast seems like a gamma-ray burst, but when scientists first detected it with NASA's Swift satellite on 18 February, the explosion was about 25 times closer and lasted 100 times longer than a typical gamma-ray burst.
"This could be a new kind of burst, or we might be seeing a gamma-ray burst from an entirely different angle," said Swift scientist John Nousek at Penn State University. Astronomers don't fully understand gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). But they theorize that when one is pointed our way, it appears brighter than when the beams it produces shoot off in other directions.
The explosion originated in a star-forming galaxy about 440 million light-years away towards the constellation Aries. This would be the second-closest gamma-ray burst ever detected, if indeed it is one.
The burst lasted for nearly 2000 seconds, or about 33 minutes, astronomers say. Most bursts last a few milliseconds to tens of seconds.
It was dimmer than most. Even so, the newly spotted point of light in the sky outshines the entire galaxy in which the event occurred.
If the eruption indeed precedes a supernova, then it would reach peak brightness in about a week, scientists said. | 
