What happens when fragments of a "turbocharged cosmic blowtorch" rip through the universe?

On March 19, the brightest explosion ever seen with the naked eye was observed by astronomers. The event, known as a gamma-ray burst, was so far away that light from the explosion took 7.5 billion years to reach Earth. That's half the estimated age of the universe.

"Observing such a phenomenon is like looking back in time, watching the death throes of a star that collapsed into a black hole three billion years before the Earth was even formed," said Hawai'i astronomer Emily Levesque.

The "big burst" is the topic of a talk by Levesque at the Institute for Astronomy Open House on Sunday. She'll talk about what causes these brilliant explosions, how they're observed and what they reveal about the universe.

Big gamma-ray explosions is just one topic among several short lectures about what's happening in astronomy. Other lectures cover what caused the solar system to have a shaking fit, how to buy the right telescope for the kids and the burning question: Does the mysterious "dark matter" matter?

In the institute courtyard, aka space headquarters, children can play Astro-Jeopardy, travel through space in the StarLab planetarium, launch bottle rockets and peer through telescopes to view the sun.