The Progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts:

As we"ve discussed a lot recently, gamma ray bursts have the tendency to be just as spectacular as supernova blasts, with none of the glory. Yet comparatively, our amount of knowledge about them remains decidedly small. Especially so when dealing with how they form. The firsts of these high energy events were brought to our attention by the Vela-5B Satellite in the early 1970"s. At the time of their discovery, we had a difficult time pinpointing their origin, but over the course of the next few years, we were successful in determining that the events were non-local (meaning, they didn"t originated in, or around the sun). Eventually, it was thought that the detected gamma ray-bursts, or GRBs (what these events were eventually called) had a luminosity of about 10^39 ergs, we now know that this is ~13 magnitudes smaller than the actual intensity. Due to the much lower assumed intensity value, astronomers came to the conclusion that the GRB"s may take place in the accretion disk around a collapsing star.

It"s never THAT easy though. Is it? See how our views have changed over the years: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/the-progenitors-of-gamma-ray-bursts/

Image Credit: NASA (Unedited Version: http://ow.ly/rP9EY)

The Progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts:

As we"ve discussed a lot recently, gamma ray bursts have the tendency to be just as spectacular as supernova blasts, with none of the glory. Yet comparatively, our amount of knowledge about them remains decidedly small. Especially so when dealing with how they form. The firsts of these high energy events were brought to our attention by the Vela-5B Satellite in the early 1970"s. At the time of their discovery, we had a difficult time pinpointing their origin, but over the course of the next few years, we were successful in determining that the events were non-local (meaning, they didn"t originated in, or around the sun). Eventually, it was thought that the detected gamma ray-bursts, or GRBs (what these events were eventually called) had a luminosity of about 10^39 ergs, we now know that this is ~13 magnitudes smaller than the actual intensity. Due to the much lower assumed intensity value, astronomers came to the conclusion that the GRB"s may take place in the accretion disk around a collapsing star.

It"s never THAT easy though. Is it? See how our views have changed over the years: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/?p=11511

Image Credit: NASA (Unedited Version: http://ow.ly/rP9EY)

The Progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts:

As we"ve discussed a lot recently, gamma ray bursts have the tendency to be just as spectacular as supernova blasts, with none of the glory. Yet comparatively, our amount of knowledge about them remains decidedly small. Especially so when dealing with how they form. The firsts of these high energy events were brought to our attention by the Vela-5B Satellite in the early 1970"s. At the time of their discovery, we had a difficult time pinpointing their origin, but over the course of the next few years, we were successful in determining that the events were non-local (meaning, they didn"t originated in, or around the sun). Eventually, it was thought that the detected gamma ray-bursts, or GRBs (what these events were eventually called) had a luminosity of about 10^39 ergs, we now know that this is ~13 magnitudes smaller than the actual intensity. Due to the much lower assumed intensity value, astronomers came to the conclusion that the GRB"s may take place in the accretion disk around a collapsing star.

It"s never THAT easy though. Is it? See how our views have changed over the years: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/?p=11511

Image Credit: NASA (Unedited Version: http://ow.ly/rP9EY)

The Progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts:

As we"ve discussed a lot recently, gamma ray bursts have the tendency to be just as spectacular as supernova blasts, with none of the glory. Yet comparatively, our amount of knowledge about them remains decidedly small. Especially so when dealing with how they form. The firsts of these high energy events were brought to our attention by the Vela-5B Satellite in the early 1970"s. At the time of their discovery, we had a difficult time pinpointing their origin, but over the course of the next few years, we were successful in determining that the events were non-local (meaning, they didn"t originated in, or around the sun). Eventually, it was thought that the detected gamma ray-bursts, or GRBs (what these events were eventually called) had a luminosity of about 10^39 ergs, we now know that this is ~13 magnitudes smaller than the actual intensity. Due to the much lower assumed intensity value, astronomers came to the conclusion that the GRB"s may take place in the accretion disk around a collapsing star.

It"s never THAT easy though. Is it? See how our views have changed over the years: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/?p=11511

Image Credit: NASA (Unedited Version: http://ow.ly/rP9EY)

Activity from Ancient, Invisible Galaxy Observed

Behold, the light of a gamma-ray burst that took place more than 13 billion years ago!

As most of you are aware, the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing speed, which in turn, pushes all galaxies farther away from us. Ultimately, this will result in these galaxies receding so far away, to the point that some of them eventually disappear forever, traveling too fast (located too far away) for their light to ever reach us. However, many of the galaxies that are now too far away were once much closer, offering us an opportunity to study distant, ancient galaxies as they appeared long before our planet was conceived.

s such, astronomers were recently able to detect a destructive event from one such galaxy, located 12.7 billion light-years away. Meaning we are observing the galaxy as it appeared almost 13 billion years ago; basically when the universe was still in diapers, more or less. The galaxy is generally too far away (and too red-shifted as a result of the universe"s expansion) for us to be capable of observing closely

So.. how was this galaxy detected? Find out: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/light-from-an-invisible-galaxy-appears/

Image Credit: Gemini Observatory / AURA / Lynette Cook

The Study of Gamma Ray Bursts (part II)

In a previous article, we discussed the first two major telescopes that were used to study gamma ray bursts (GMBs). These two were the Vela satellites and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO). There was a significant gap between the creation of CRGO and the creation of its successor --BeppoSAX . Ultimately, two decades passed before BepooSAX was created, but despite the rather long time frame between these two observatories, both were an integral part of the future of space telescopes. Tsvi Piran, an astrophysicist who has been at the forefront of gamma-ray burst physics for several decades, describes CGRO as being the "First Revolution" and BeppoSAX as the "Second Revolution."

To learn all about these amazing telescopes and what they did for gamma ray astronomy, see:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/grb-part-2/

Image source:
NASA