Discovery
A gamma-ray burst (GRB) is a highly luminous flash of gamma rays—the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation. GRBs were first detected in 1967 by the Vela satellites (a series of spacecraft designed to detect nuclear explosions in space). The initial burst is often followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitted at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and radio). The first GRB afterglow to be discovered was the X-ray afterglow of GRB 970228, which was detected by BeppoSAX, an Italian–Dutch satellite originally designed to study X-rays.
On Thursday May 8, 1997, at 21:42 UTC, BeppoSAX's Gamma Ray Burst Monitor registered a gamma-ray burst that lasted approximately 15 seconds. It was also detected by Ulysses, a robotic space probe designed to study the Sun, and by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on board the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. The burst also occurred within the field of view of one of BeppoSAX's two X-ray Wide Field Cameras. Within a few hours, the BeppoSAX team localized the burst to an error box—a small area around the specific position to account for the error in the position—with a diameter of approximately 10 arcminutes.
Read more about this topic: GRB 970508
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)