Fuzzy blobs hold the secret of gamma-ray bursts - Feb. 10, 1999. Astronomers have released a new Hubble photograph of a gamma-ray burst's fading optical counterpart. Gotcha! The big one that didn't get away: Jan. 27, 1999. For the first time, scientists have witnessed the visible light emitted at the same time as a gamma-ray burst. The optical counterpart was so bright that it could have been seen in the night sky with a simple pair of binoculars. Gamma-ray Bursters cross the 'Line of Death' - Oct. 13, 1998. A study of gamma ray burst spectra shows one more thing that these mysterious, cosmological gamma ray bursts are not. The biggest explosion since the Big Bang?: the latest clue in solving the gamma-ray burst mystery (May 6, 1998). |
Cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts Every day powerful explosions illuminate the sky. They come from random directions. We don't know what causes them and you can't see them with the naked eye. They're called "gamma-ray bursts". Gamma ray bursts were discovered by accident in the 1960's, and for the past 30 years they've been the target of intense research and speculation by astronomers. Until recently we didn't know if they came from our own solar system or perhaps as far away as the edge of the universe. They've been called the greatest mystery of modern astronomy. In 1991 NASA launched the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory carrying an instrument called the Burst and Transient Source Experiment, or "BATSE" for short. BATSE was designed specifically for the study of the enigmatic gamma ray bursters and has led to a new understanding of their origin and distribution in the universe. NEW - www.Magnetars.com 21 May 98: MAGNETARS! In today's issue of Nature NASA and UAH astronomers announced the discovery of "magnetars", neutron stars with super-strong magnetic fields. Magnetars solve the longstanding mystery of soft gamma-ray repeaters and they have important implications for the age of the Galaxy and the Universe. Full Story 
BATSE has
detected gamma rays coming up from the Earth -
not deep space - when the spacecraft was over
thunderstorms. The picture above is a red sprite seen by an aircraft at 43,000 ft.
Sprites are associated with severe lightning storms and are one possible cause of the terrestrial gamma ray flashes discovered by BATSE.
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