Overview
- NASA’s Fermi telescope detected GRB 250702B on July 2, 2025, with intermittent emission persisting for more than seven hours.
- A peer-reviewed study published Nov. 26 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters placed the source about 8 billion light-years away in a galaxy so dusty that only infrared and high-energy X-rays were observed.
- Follow-up across Gemini, VLT, Keck, Hubble and other facilities culminated in October JWST imaging that provided the clearest view of the host and located the burst along a dark dust lane, not at the galactic core.
- Scientists have not identified a progenitor, with leading possibilities spanning a massive-star collapse, a tidal disruption by a black hole, or a helium-star–black-hole merger.
- Some coverage notes possible X-ray activity before the main burst, a detail researchers describe as intriguing but not yet consistently corroborated.