The quoted afterglow of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRB_080319B had an absolute magnitude of -38 for a (very) short time. What kind of mechanism could even account for this? Other claimed GRBs have reached near this level and likely a fair few are currently missed as apparently they are seen in wide wavelength ranges.
Brightest stars have magnitude -10 or so
The milky way galaxy as a whole has magnitude -20.8
Big elliptical galaxies can go to -23
3C 273 quasar is ~ -27
The brightest/most powerful quasars observed about -32
This blazar OJ 287, modeled as a of a 150million mass black hole going periodically punching through an accretion disk of a 18 billion mass black hole generates transient flares of -28 to -29
So how can a jet from a collapsed star become a million times brighter than a giant elliptical galaxy or 1000+ times brighter (in the optical in this case, but in general as well) than the brightest quasars, which are super massive black holes with several solar system wide accretion disk. It (the grb) was even potentially just visible to the naked eye for a while from ~ 2billion parsec. Even if it was for only a minute or so.
Is it even known with good confidence levels that this was an 'afterglow' of a gamma burst from a star? Does anyone know if there is even a working limit in the models in terms of brightness that these things can reach? What the chances that it is instead something else (although no idea what it could plausibly be...)? Does the spectra or other observations/models rule that out?
Brightest stars have magnitude -10 or so
The milky way galaxy as a whole has magnitude -20.8
Big elliptical galaxies can go to -23
3C 273 quasar is ~ -27
The brightest/most powerful quasars observed about -32
This blazar OJ 287, modeled as a of a 150million mass black hole going periodically punching through an accretion disk of a 18 billion mass black hole generates transient flares of -28 to -29
So how can a jet from a collapsed star become a million times brighter than a giant elliptical galaxy or 1000+ times brighter (in the optical in this case, but in general as well) than the brightest quasars, which are super massive black holes with several solar system wide accretion disk. It (the grb) was even potentially just visible to the naked eye for a while from ~ 2billion parsec. Even if it was for only a minute or so.
Is it even known with good confidence levels that this was an 'afterglow' of a gamma burst from a star? Does anyone know if there is even a working limit in the models in terms of brightness that these things can reach? What the chances that it is instead something else (although no idea what it could plausibly be...)? Does the spectra or other observations/models rule that out?
