NASA's Swift satellite has spotted the brightest GRB yet.  It was visually observed to be as bright as magnitude +5 to +6!  Its distance is 7.5 billion light years.  Here's a link to the NASA story:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/brightest_grb.html

Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA

Ed and others: I imaged the area last night with my 18" f/12.6 classical cass used at f/7.1 approx and an FLI PL3200 camera (KAF3200ME sensor)

I got two hours of 2x2 binned data: