Amazing Record-Breaking Explosion Seen by Hubble

A star seen by the Hubble about 7.5 billion light years away (about halfway back to the Big Bang), was, for almost a minute, as bright as 10 million galaxies.
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken the picture of the now fading visible light part of an extremely powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the brightest object ever seen from Earth with just the naked eye.
This star erupted in a tremendous flash of gamma rays and other electromagnetic radiation at 2:12 a.m. EDT on March 19, and was detected by NASA's gamma ray burst watchdog satellite called Swift.

This explosion has been named GRB 080319B and was in the constellation Bootes. Astronomers had hoped to see the galaxy where this star had originated from, but it appears that the light from the explosion is still drowning out the light of the galaxy.
From patterns seen before, astronomers thought that bright bursts usually fade faster. However, this explosion was different in that it took a long time to fade. Thus, astronomers now wonder what was able to power this tremendous explosion.
These massive explosions are thought to be caused by incredibly large stars with about 50 times the weight of our own Sun. The theory behind the incredible light emanating from them is that these "hypernovae" emit a sort of concentrated beam aimed, in this case, directly at Earth.

If you want to see some images or more information, go here: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/17