HUBBLE FINDS THAT EARTH IS SAFE FROM ONE CLASS OF GAMMA-RAY BURST (STScI-PR06-20)

FOR RELEASE: 1:00 pm (EDT) May 10, 2006

PRESS RELEASE NO.: STScI-PR06-20

HUBBLE FINDS THAT EARTH IS SAFE FROM ONE CLASS OF GAMMA-RAY BURST

Homeowners may have to worry about floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes
destroying their homes, but at least they can remove long-duration
gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from their list of potential natural disasters,
according to recent findings by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are powerful flashes of high-energy
radiation that are sometimes seen coming from certain types of
supernovae (the explosions of extremely massive stars). If Earth were
flashed by a nearby long-duration burst, the devastation could range
from destroying the ozone in our atmosphere to triggering climate change
and altering life’s evolution.

Now astronomers analyzing long-duration bursts in several Hubble telescope surveys have concluded that the Milky Way Galaxy is an unlikely place for them to pop off. These images are a sampling of the host galaxies of long-duration bursts taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The green crosshairs pinpoint the location of the gamma-ray bursts, now long faded away.

To see and read more about the research on the Web, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/20

For more information, please contact:

Ray Villard/Donna Weaver
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
(Phone: 410-338-4514/4493; E-mail: villard@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:villard@xxxxxxxxx>/dweaver@xxxxxxxxx)

Andrew Fruchter
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
(Phone: 410-338-5018; E-mail: fruchter@xxxxxxxxx)

The Hubble Space Telescope is an international cooperative project
between NASA and the European Space Agency. The Space Telescope Science
Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. The Institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington.

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