The Mystery: What and where are the gamma-ray burst sources?
The grids below show the entire sky as seen from Earth.
What Astronomers Expected to Find: Before the Compton Observatory
If gamma-ray bursts had come from known stars in our galaxy, the bursts
should have been concentrated along the plane of the Milky Way, as shown
in this map:
What Astronomers Found: Using the Compton Observatory
Instead, the gamma-ray bursts mapped by the observatory's BATSE instrument
were distributed equally in all directions. Thus, they don't come from
known galactic objects. So where
do astronomers think the bursts come from?
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Viewing The Violent Universe was created by
Joslyn Schoemer, Stephanie Leitner and Tom Chi.
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