1. Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
2. Astronomy Department, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
3. Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
4. UCO/Lick Observatory, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
5. Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
6. W.M. Keck Observatories, Kamuela, Hawaii 96743, USA
7. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
8. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
9. University of Virginia, Department of Astronomy, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, USA
10. University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
11. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109, USA
12. Laboratoire d'Astrophysique, Observatoire de Grenoble, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
13. Gemini Observatory, Hilo, Hawaii 96720, USA
14. University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
15. Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, Maryland 21044, USA

Correspondence to: J. S. Bloom^1,2 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.S.B. (Email: jbloom@astro.berkeley.edu).

Abstract

The explosion that results in a cosmic -ray burst (GRB) is thought to produce emission from two physical processes: the central engine gives rise to the high-energy emission of the burst through internal shocking¹, and the subsequent interaction of the flow with the external environment produces long-wavelength afterglows^{2, 3, 4}. Although observations of afterglows⁵ continue to refine our understanding of GRB progenitors and relativistic shocks, -ray observations alone have not yielded a clear picture of the origin of the prompt emission⁶ nor details of the central engine. Only one concurrent visible-light transient has been found⁷ and it was associated with emission from an external shock. Here we report the discovery of infrared emission contemporaneous with a GRB, beginning 7.2 minutes after the onset of GRB 041219a (ref. 8). We acquired 21 images during the active phase of the burst, yielding early multi-colour observations. Our analysis of the initial infrared pulse suggests an origin consistent with internal shocks.

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