RSS Feeds

Earth Science

Space Science

Life Science

Fields of Scientific Study

Nanotechnology

Cancer

Definitions of The Fields of Scientific Study

Swift Satellite records early phase of gamma ray burst

March 03, 2009

UK astronomers, using a telescope aboard the NASA Swift Satellite, have captured information from the early stages of a gamma ray burst - the most violent and luminous explosions occurring in the Universe since the Big Bang. The work was published on Friday 27th February in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Swift is able to both locate and point at gamma ray bursts (GRBs) far quicker than any other telescope, so by using its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) the astronomers were able to obtain an ultraviolet spectrum of a GRB just 251 seconds after its onset - the earliest ever captured. Further use of the instrument in this way will allow them to calculate the distance and brightness of GRBs within a few hundred seconds of their initial outburst, and gather new information about the causes of bursts and the galaxies they originate from.

It is currently thought that some GRBs are caused by immense explosions following the collapse of the core of a rapidly rotating, high-mass star into a black hole, but there are still many mysteries surrounding them.

"The UVOT's wavelength range, coupled with the fact that Swift is a space observatory with a speedy response rate, unconstrained by time of day or weather, has allowed us to collect this early ultraviolet spectrum," said Martin Still from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) at UCL.

Paul Kuin, also from MSSL, who works on the calibration of the UVOT instrument explained: "By looking at these earlier moments of gamma ray bursts, we will not only be able to better calculate things such as the luminosity and distance of a burst, but to find out more about the galaxies that play host to them and the impact these explosions have on their environments. Once this new technique is applied to much brighter bursts, we'll have a wealth of new data."

Massimiliano De Pasquale, a GRB scientist of the UVOT team from MSSL, added, "The UVOT instrument is particularly suited to study bursts with an average to high redshift (1) - a part of the ultraviolet spectrum that is difficult for even the very big ground-based telescopes to study. Using UVOT with Swift, we can now find redshifts for bursts that were difficult to capture in the past and find out more about their distant host galaxies, about ten billion light years away."

Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, said, "This is an amazing first for the UVOT instrument and an exciting new development in the study of these most violent and energetic explosions. Thanks to the hard work of our UK scientists at MSSL, and their partners, we can now gather far more information about gamma ray bursts and the early Universe."

Since its launch in 2004, the Swift satellite has provided the most comprehensive study so far of GRBs and their afterglows. Using the UVOT to obtain ultraviolet spectrums, the Swift team will be able to build on this study and even determine more about the host galaxies' chemistry.

Paul Kuin said, "The new spectrum has not only allowed us to determine the distance of the gamma ray burst's host galaxy but has revealed the density of its hydrogen clouds. Learning more about these far-away galaxies helps us to understand how they formed during the early universe. The gamma ray burst observed on this occasion originated in a galaxy 8 billion light years from Earth."

Science and Technology Facilities Council

Related Gamma Ray Burst Current Events and Gamma Ray Burst News Articles

Gamma Ray Burst Current Events and Gamma Ray Burst News RSS

Blast from the past gives clues about early universe
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have gained tantalizing insights into the nature of the most distant object ever observed in the Universe -- a gigantic stellar explosion known as a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).

Fermi telescope caps its first year with a glimpse of space-time
During its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope mapped the extreme sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity.

A Stellar Explosion You Could See on Earth!
Astronomers are familiar with seeing amazing things through their telescopes. But nothing prepared them for an incredible explosion detected early Wednesday morning by NASA's Swift satellite. At 2:12 a.m. EDT, Swift detected an explosion from deep space that was so powerful that its afterglow was briefly visible to the naked eye. Even more astonishing, the explosion itself took place halfway across the visible universe!

Astronomers find record-old cosmic explosion
Using the powerful one-two combo of NASA's Swift satellite and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers from a number of institutions, including Johns Hopkins, have detected a mysterious type of cosmic explosion farther back in time than ever before.

UO plays key role in LIGO's new view of a cosmic event
An international team of physicists, including University of Oregon scientists, has concluded that last February's intense burst of gamma rays possibly coming from the Andromeda Galaxy lacked a gravitational wave. That absence, they say, rules out an initial interpretation that the burst came from merging neutron stars or black holes within Andromeda.

Robotic telescope unravels mystery of cosmic blasts
Scientists have used the world's largest robotic telescope to make the earliest-ever measurement of the optical polarisation* of a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) just 203 seconds after the start of the cosmic explosion. This finding, which provides new insight into GRB physics, is published in Science today (15th March 2007).

Media Invite - UK Press Briefing on Swift
Countdown to the launch of Swift

CERN scientists predict supernova
A team of theoretical physicists working at CERN and the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel has developed a theory to account for the mysterious gamma ray bursts that come from the depths of the Universe. According to their ideas, gamma ray bursts are linked to supernovae, the cataclysmic explosions of massive stars at the end of their lives. When a new gamma ray burst (GRB 030329) was seen on March 29 2003, the CERN-Technion team immediately predicted that light from a supernova would first become clearly visible on Earth from the same direction on April 8. And so it did (SN 2003dh). This is the first time that scientists have predicted the exact day of observation of a supernova. U

New space telescope aims to seek out and record explosive gamma ray bursts.
A state of the art space telescope built by scientists at UCL will make its way to the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, USA on a mission to unravel the mysteries of the universes gamma rays. The telescope - called UVOT - will be one of three telescopes on a special NASA orbiting space observatory planned for launch in 2003. The observatory , called SWIFT, has been specially designed to find gamma ray bursts. The most explosive events in the universe, little is know of about why and when gamma ray bursts occur. The most distant bursts have been spotted in a galaxy 12 billion light years away and scientists believe that the explosion coincided with the early beginnings of the universe.

Astronomers Unravel Mystery of Gamma Ray Bursts
The cause of gamma ray bursts, the most violent and explosive events in the Universe, has remained a mystery since they were first discovered in 1967. Now a team of scientists, led by astronomers from the University of Leicester, believes they have found an answer to the puzzle. Their research results [published in `Nature` on 4th April] indicate that gamma ray bursts are caused by the death of a star so huge that when it dies in a supernova, its core collapses to form a black hole, resulting in an intense outburst of gamma rays. Dr. Julian Osborne of the University of Leicester explained,` Until now it was unclear whether gamma ray bursts were caused by a supernova explosion of a giant sta

More Gamma Ray Burst Current Events and Gamma Ray Burst News Articles

	Exploding Superstars: Understanding Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts (Springer Praxis Books / Popular Astronomy) by Alain Mazure (Author), Stéphane Basa (Author) In Exploding Superstars, Alain Mazure and Stephane Basa show how great stellar explosions have become extremely important in recent years to cosmologists trying to understand the evolution of our universe since the Big Bang and the scale of that universe. Recently supernovae and gamma-ray bursters have been used, for example, as "standard candles," illuminating their immediate environs like searchlights and allowing us to study the cosmos between them and us. In the first three chapters the authors briefly review the great explosions that will form the subject matter of the book--namely, supernovae and gamma-ray bursters. They describe the very early universe, after the Big Bang, and then how "the lights came on all over the universe as the very first stars began to...
	Toward an Understanding of the Progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts by Joshua S. Bloom (Author) The various possibilities for the origin ("progenitors") of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) manifest in differing observable properties. Through deep spectroscopic and high-resolution imaging observations of some GRB hosts, I demonstrate that well-localized long-duration GRBs are connected with otherwise normal star-forming galaxies at moderate redshifts of order unity. Using high-mass binary stellar population synthesis models, I quantify the expected spatial extent around galaxies of coalescing neutron stars, one of the leading contenders for GRB progenitors. I then test this scenario by examining the offset distribution of GRBs about their apparent hosts making extensive use of ground-based optical data from Keck and Palomar and space-based imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope. The offset...
	The Biggest Bangs: The Mystery of Gamma-Ray Bursts, the Most Violent Explosions in the Universe by Jonathan I. Katz (Author) Gamma-ray bursts are the most violent events since the birth of the universe. They are about ten times more energetic than the most powerful supernovae. At their peak, gamma-ray bursts are the brightest objects in space, about 100,000 times brighter than an entire galaxy. And yet until recently these titanic eruptions were the most mysterious events in astronomy. In The Biggest Bangs, astrophysicist Jonathan Katz offers a fascinating account of the scientific quest to unravel the mystery of these incredible phenomena. With an eye for colorful detail and a talent for translating scientific jargon into plain English, Katz ranges from the accidental discovery of gamma-ray bursts (by a Cold War satellite system monitoring the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) to the frustrating but ultimately...
	Gamma-ray Burst 01-N (Primary Contributor)
	History -- Mega Disasters: Mega Gamma Ray Burst Also With: Creative Differences (Producer) Gamma ray bursts occur randomly and often. At times, they light up the reaches of deep space like fireworks. Just ten seconds' exposure to one would spell doom for Earth. And scientists at the University of Kansas believe such a thing may have happened 450 million years ago. The resulting destruction of the ozone layer and chemical smog might explain the mass extinction that ended the Ordovician Period. If it occurred once, what's to stop it from happening again? And what would be the result if such a devastating event happened today? This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
	Hubble Gamma Ray Burst Photo by Spaceimages
	Gamma-Ray Bursts: The brightest explosions in the Universe (Springer Praxis Books / Astronomy and Planetary Sciences) by Gilbert Vedrenne (Author), Jean-Luc Atteia (Author) Since their discovery was first announced in 1973, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been among the most fascination objects in the universe. While the initial mystery has gone, the fascination continues, sustained by the close connection linking GRBs with some of the most fundamental topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Both authors have been active in GRB observations for over two decades and have produced an outstanding account on both the history and the perspectives of GRB research.
	Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Afterglow Era: Proceedings of the International Workshop Held in Rome, Italy, 17-20 October 2000 (ESO Astrophysics Symposia) by Enrico Costa (Editor), Filippo Frontera (Editor), Jens Hjorth (Editor) Proceedings of the International Workshop held October 17-20, 2001 in Rome, Italy. Reviews the research of the last two years and covers the global properties of GRBs, GRB afterglows, GRB host galaxies, cosmology using GRBs, and theories for GRBs and their afterglows.
	Gamma-Ray Burst: Sixth Huntsville Symposium, Huntsville (AIP Conference Proceedings / Astronomy and Astrophysics) by Charles Meegan (Editor), Chryssa Kouveliotou (Editor), Neil Gehrels (Editor) This was a technical symposium for astrophysicists working on gamma-ray bursts. It included discussions on the latest theoretical and experimental research on this topic, as well as plans for the next generation of orbiting instrumentation. The proceedings will be useful for specialists in the area of gamma-ray burst astronomy.
	Gamma-Ray Bursts: 30 Years of Discovery: Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium (AIP Conference Proceedings / Astronomy and Astrophysics) by E.E. Fenimore (Editor), M. Galasso (Editor) In the last thirty years, gamma-ray bursts have grown from an oddity to a central position in astrophysics. Not only are they the largest explosions since the big bang, capable of flooding most of the universe with gamma-rays, but their brilliance serves as a backlight that can illuminate the cosmos far deeper into the early universe than any other object. Their unpredictability has forced researchers to use extreme measures to observe them: completely autonomous satellites and robotic ground-based telescopes. Their bizarre physical properties have pushed us to develop new theories of astrophysical explosions. Topics include: global properties of GRBs; X-ray flashes; ultra-high energy gamma-rays, neutrinos, gravity waves; prompt emission and early afterglows; relativistic jets and...