SWIFT gamma ray burst discoveries

[Rick]

Astronomers spot weird near-Earth explosion

A mysterious new kind of cosmic explosion has been spotted by scientists, according to NASA. The baffling blast was detected about 440m light years away in the constellation Aries, on 18 February.

from The Register

NASA's own report on the event

[Mike]

The Swift telescope is about to break the boundaries of our cosmic vision, to see the most distant objects ever recorded, its chief scientist believes.

The Nasa space observatory has already looked nearly 13 billion light-years across the Universe to record the light from a cataclysmic star explosion.

But Dr Neil Gehrels expects Swift to see even more distant events.

The investigator says the telescope has the ability to observe perhaps the very first stars to shine in the cosmos.

"That's the great hope," he told the UK's National Astronomy Meeting (Nam), hosted this year at Leicester University.

Leicester is a major partner in the Swift mission - it helped to build one of its key instruments - and Dr Gehrels came to the Nam to review the satellite's first full year of observations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4886816.stm

[Rick]

Scientists have, for the first time, been able to watch a star go supernova in real time, thanks to NASA's Swift satellite.

The event began back in February, when the Swift satellite, designed to detect and respond to a gamma ray burst (GRB) within 20 to 70 seconds, first sounded the alarm. The burst it had spotted lasted much longer than normal, continuing for around 40 minutes. Because of this, the observatory was able to capture data using all three of its instrument sets.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/31/astronomers_supernova/

Also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5298726.stm

[Rick]

Nasa's Swift satellite has seen a giant flare explode from a nearby star.

Our Sun also flares when twisted magnetic field lines in the solar atmosphere suddenly snap - but this was on a far bigger scale, scientists say.

The energy released by the II Pegasi star was equivalent to about 50 million trillion atomic bombs, they calculate.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6124960.stm

[Rick]

New observations of one of the largest and most violent explosions in the universe have provided valuable clues for intergalactic sleuths seeking to understand the physics of Gamma Ray Bursts.

Scientists at the Liverpool John Moores University were able to begin observing the burst just 203 seconds after it had begun, thanks to the early warning given by NASA's Swift satellite.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/19/grb_magnetic_afterglow/

[Rick]

Astronomers using NASA's Swift satellite and the Japanese/US Suzaku X-ray observatory have discovered a totally new kind of active galactic nuclei (AGN).

The new class is relatively common, the researchers say, but because the galactic cores are almost entirely shrouded in gas and dust, they are hard to spot.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/31/agns_unmasked/

[Rick]

See also: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070731_hidden_agn.html

[mickw]

Combining 39 individual frames taken over 11 hours of exposure time, NASA astronomers have created an ultraviolet mosaic of the nearby "Triangulum Galaxy."

"This is the most detailed ultraviolet image of an entire galaxy ever taken," says Stefan Immler of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Immler used NASA's Swift satellite to take the images, and he then assembled them into a mosaic that seamlessly covers the entire galaxy.

The Triangulum Galaxy is also called M33 for being the 33rd object in Charles Messier's sky catalog. It is located about 2.9 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum.

More:  http://spaceflightnow.com:80/news/n0803/03swift/

[Rick]

The Swift space telescope has detected a gamma-ray burst some 12.8 billion light-years from Earth - a record.

These intensely bright but fleeting flashes of very high-energy radiation signal some of the Universe's most violent happenings.

This blast, designated GRB 080913, probably originated in the catastrophic explosion of a massive star.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7626532.stm

[Rick]

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's has captured a hi-res image of a gamma-ray burst boasting "the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen".

The explosion, known to its chums as GRB 080916C, occurred on 15 September in the constellation Carina at a distance of 12.2 billion light-years from Earth. It was captured by Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) which between them recorded "the blast's initial, or prompt, gamma-ray emission from energies between 3,000 to more than 5 billion times that of visible light".

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/20/fermi_burst/

[Rick]

Comet Lulin will over the next couple of nights be visible to the naked eye as it approaches to within 38m miles of Earth, although sky gazers shouldn't expect to see more than a "fuzzball".

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/23/comet_lulin/

Also, APOD a few days back: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090221.html

[Rick]

The cataclysmic explosion of a giant star early in the history of the Universe is the most distant single object ever detected by telescopes.

The colossal blast was picked up first by Nasa's Swift space observatory which is tuned to see the high-energy gamma-rays emitted from extreme events.

Other telescopes then followed up the signal, confirming the source to be more than 13 billion light-years away.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8022917.stm

[mickw]

A new view of the Andromeda Galaxy reveals hot, young stars in ultraviolet light.

NASA's Swift satellite acquired the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet, according to NASA. The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, is the largest and closest spiral galaxy to our own.

"Swift reveals about 20,000 ultraviolet sources in M31, especially hot, young stars and dense star clusters," said Stefan Immler, a research scientist on the Swift team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Of particular importance is that we have covered the galaxy in three ultraviolet filters. That will let us study M31's star-formation processes in much greater detail than previously possible."

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090916-andromeda-galaxy.html   

[Rick]

...and APOD: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090917.html

[Rick]

Astronomers have confirmed that an exploding star spotted by Nasa's Swift satellite is the most distant cosmic object to be detected by telescopes.

In the journal Nature, two teams of astronomers report their observations of a gamma-ray burst from a star that died 13.1 billion light-years away.

The massive star died about 630 million years after the Big Bang.

UK astronomer Nial Tanvir described the observation as "a step back in cosmic time".

Professor Tanvir led an international team studying the afterglow of the explosion, using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8329865.stm

[Rick]

NASA's Swift, Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to study one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts yet observed. More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from its location.

Astronomers say they have never seen anything this bright, long-lasting and variable before. Usually, gamma-ray bursts mark the destruction of a massive star, but flaring emission from these events never lasts more than a few hours.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/star-disintegration.html

[Rocket Pooch]

Cosmic distance record 'broken'

A cataclysmic explosion of a huge star near the edge of the observable Universe may be the most distant single object yet spied by a telescope.

Scientists believe the blast, which was detected by Nasa's Swift space observatory, occurred a mere 520 million years after the Big Bang.

This means its light has taken a staggering 13.14 billion years to reach Earth.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13539914

[Rick]

NASA's Swift Finds a Gamma-Ray Burst With a Dual Personality

A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. Papers describing both interpretations appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the universe's most luminous explosions, emitting more energy in a few seconds than our sun will during its entire energy-producing lifetime. What astronomers are calling the "Christmas burst" is so unusual that it can be modeled in such radically different ways.

"What the Christmas burst seems to be telling us is that the family of gamma-ray bursts is more diverse than we fully appreciate," said Christina Thoene, the supernova study's lead author, at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain. It's only by rapidly detecting hundreds of them, as Swift is doing, that we can catch some of the more eccentric siblings."

Common to both scenarios is the presence of a neutron star, the crushed core that forms when a star many times the sun's mass explodes. When the star's fuel is exhausted, it collapses under its own weight, compressing its core so much that about a half-million times Earth's mass is squeezed into a sphere no larger than a city.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/dual-burst.html

[Rick]

Swift enters safe mode over gyro issue while NASA preps patch to shake it off

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has dropped into safe mode after one of the spacecraft's three gyroscopes showed signs of degradation.

The fix will require a software update to permit the spacecraft to continue with its two remaining gyros.

The spacecraft, which was launched in 2004 for a planned two-year mission, is designed to study gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). It was originally called the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer but was later renamed for its Principal Investigator, Neil Gehrels.

As with several other NASA missions – for example, Chandra – Swift's future is uncertain. Although a 2022 Senior Review panel deemed Swift the top-ranked satellite among operating missions other than Hubble and Chandra, its extended mission operations only run through FY2025. NASA is due to conduct the next Senior Review in spring next year.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/19/swift_enters_safe_mode/