NASA Sees 'Watershed' Cosmic Blast in Unique Detail: This artist rendering is of a blast of light from a dying star in a distant galaxy that on April 27 became the focus of astronomers around the world. The explosion, known as a gamma-ray burst and designated GRB 130427A, tops the charts as one of the brightest ever seen. A trio of NASA satellites - Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) & the Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission - working in concert with ground-based robotic telescopes, captured never-before-seen details that challenge current theoretical understandings of how gamma-ray bursts work. Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos. Astronomers think most occur when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole. The black hole then drives jets of particles that drill all the way through the collapsing star at nearly the speed of light. Credit: NASA's Go...