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Nature 434, 1075-1076 (28 April 2005) | doi:10.1038/4341075a; Published online 27 April 2005

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Astrophysics:  A certain flare

Davide Lazzati1

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Giant flashes from soft gamma-ray repeaters are spectacular but rare events — only three have ever been observed in our Galaxy. The suspicion is that we have been missing some from farther afield.

On 27 December 2004, virtually all of the gamma-ray detectors in orbit were triggered by the brightest flash of gamma-rays ever seen. Two similar flares had previously been detected from different sources of the same class during 30 years of observations1, 2 — on 5 March 1979 and 27 August 1998.

  1. Davide Lazzati is at JILA, University of Colorado at Boulder, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440, USA.
    Email: lazzati@colorado.edu

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