Astronomers have begun analysing what could be the closest gamma ray burst ever detected. The work could shed new light on the mysterious cause of these explosions, the most powerful in the Universe.

The intense flash of gamma radiation was first detected on 29 March by NASA's Earth-orbiting High-Energy Transient Explorer (HETE-2) satellite. But astronomers around the world are now performing follow-up observations.

"This burst is much closer to us than all other observed bursts, so we can study it in considerably more detail," says Carl Akerlof, at the University of Michigan, who is observing the burst with the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) in Texas, US.

Astronomers are uncertain what causes these brief but intense flashes of radiation. Some GRBs last just a fraction of a second. Others, like the one on 29 March, last tens of seconds and may be the result of particularly intense stellar explosions, called hypernovae.

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