Showing posts with label Swift Satellite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swift Satellite. Show all posts
Friday, November 22, 2013
Brightest Explosion Ever Seen in the Universe | VIDEO
A mysterious blast of light spotted earlier this year near the constellation Leo was actually the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, and was triggered by an extremely powerful stellar explosion, new research reports.
On April 27, several satellites — including NASA's Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope — observed an unusually bright burst of gamma radiation. The explosion unleashed an energetic jet of particles that traveled at nearly the speed of light, researchers said.
"We suddenly saw a gamma-ray burst that was extremely bright — a monster gamma-ray burst," study co-author Daniele Malesani, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said in a statement. "This [was] one of the most powerful gamma-ray bursts we have ever observed with the Swift satellite." . . .
Sunday, March 31, 2013
NASA Spacecraft Snaps New Photo of Potential 'Comet of the Century'
A NASA spacecraft scanning for the most powerful explosions in the universe has captured a photo of Comet ISON, an icy wanderer that could potentially dazzle stargazers when it swings close to the sun later this year.
NASA's Swift satellite, which is typically used to track intense gamma-ray bursts from distant stars, photographed Comet ISON on Jan. 30, with the space agency unveiling the photo today (March 29). By tracking the comet over the last two months, Swift has allowed astronomers to learn new details about how large the comet is and how fast it is spewing out gas and dust.
"Comet ISON has the potential to be among the brightest comets of the last 50 years, which gives us a rare opportunity to observe its changes in great detail and over an extended period," said Lead Investigator Dennis Bodewits, an astronomer with University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) who helped obtain the new image.
Some astronomers have predicted that ISON could be the "Comet of the Century" when it makes its closest approach to the sun in late November. But a recent analysis found that the comet is not brightening as expected, and may have a ways to go to meet such expectations. . . .
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Was Mysterious Gamma Ray Flash Evidence of Black Hole Devouring a Star?
On March 28th of this year (2011) a very powerful gamma-ray burst was detected by NASA's Swift satellite; initially it was thought that this was evidence of an exploding star a mere 3.8 billion light years away in a constellation called “Draco.” However, generally speaking–these types of events last only a few hours.
In this instance the beam of energy has gone on for months. Using the culmination of data retrieved by Swift, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Joshua Bloom, assistant professor of Astronomy at University of California, Berkeley told Space.com, "This is a really, really unusual event . . . it's now about two-and-a-half months old, and the fact that it just continues on and is only fading very slowly is the one really big piece of evidence that tells us this is not an ordinary gamma-ray burst."
Bloom and his colleagues now believe, based on current data that the gamma-ray flash, labeled, "Sw 1644+57" was/is more then likely from a star being ripped apart by a massive black hole.
In this instance the beam of energy has gone on for months. Using the culmination of data retrieved by Swift, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Joshua Bloom, assistant professor of Astronomy at University of California, Berkeley told Space.com, "This is a really, really unusual event . . . it's now about two-and-a-half months old, and the fact that it just continues on and is only fading very slowly is the one really big piece of evidence that tells us this is not an ordinary gamma-ray burst."
Bloom and his colleagues now believe, based on current data that the gamma-ray flash, labeled, "Sw 1644+57" was/is more then likely from a star being ripped apart by a massive black hole.
