Whatever blows up, it blows to smithereens and doesn't go off again. Scientists want to know why gamma-ray bursts happen and what causes them. Well, they start by looking for eye witnesses. That's tricky in this case because gamma-rays are invisible to the human eye. Like x-rays, gamma rays can only be seen by special cameras and tools.
Astronomers use telescopes in space to record the gamma-ray bursts.
For many years astronomers thought that gamma-ray bursts were totally invisible to the human eye. But then, in 1997, scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at a gamma-ray burst. To their surprise, they saw a faint glowing fireball. It was the first time that normal light rays were seen coming from one of these explosions. It was the fireball from the explosion.