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:
“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)
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)