The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission
With Swift, a NASA mission with international participation, scientists have a tool dedicated to answering these questions and solving the gamma-ray burst mystery. Its three instruments give scientists the ability to scrutinize gamma-ray bursts like never before. Within seconds of detecting a burst, Swift relays its location to ground stations, allowing both ground-based and space-based telescopes around the world the opportunity to observe the burst's afterglow. Swift is part of NASA's medium explorer (MIDEX) program and was launched into a low-Earth orbit on a Delta 7320 rocket on November 20, 2004. Astronomers Catch Jet from Binge-Eating Black Hole
This image composites XMM-Newton X-ray data onto an optical view of the Andromeda galaxy; the ULX is circled. Colors in the XMM image correspond to different X-ray energies: 0.2 to 1 keV (red), 1 to 2 keV (green) and 2 to 4.5 keV (blue). |
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Latest Swift Gamma-Ray Bursts
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Swift Cycle 9 Accepted Targets and Proposals Have Been Posted Back in January, a new X-ray source flared and rapidly brightened in the Andromeda galaxy (M31), located 2.5 million light-years away. Classified as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), the object is only the second ever seen in M31 and became the target of an intense observing campaign by orbiting X-ray telescopes - including NASA's Swift - and radio observatories on the ground. These efforts resulted in the first detection of radio-emitting jets from a stellar-mass black hole outside our own galaxy. The hottest and most massive stars don't live long enough to disperse throughout the galaxy. Instead, they can be found near the clouds of gas and dust where they formed - and where they will explode as supernovae after a few million years. They huddle in tight clusters with other young stars or in looser groupings called OB associations, a name reflecting their impressive populations of rare O- and B-type stars. If you're a Swift Team member looking for the Team site, try: NOTE: you will need your Team username and password to access this site. |
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions the Universe has seen since the Big Bang. They occur approximately once per day and are brief, but intense, flashes of gamma radiation. They come from all different directions of the sky and last from a few milliseconds to a few hundred seconds. So far scientists do not know what causes them. Do they signal the birth of a black hole in a massive stellar explosion? Are they the product of the collision of two neutron stars? Or is it some other exotic phenomenon that causes these bursts?
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