The American satellite BATSE spots a gamma-ray burst, then the Italian Beppo-SAX resolves it better and transmits its exact position to a robotic telescope at Los Alamos, which within 20 seconds sees the flash in the optical beam as it fades; the following night the mighty Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea calculates the redshift: 7 billion light-years away! And for a few moments, it was the brightest object in the Universe.
