Jan 23 1999
From The Space Library
Astronomers captured for the first time optical images of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) as it was occurring. Detectors of the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on NASA's orbiting Compton Gamma Ray Observatory detected the GRB as it began and radioed its position to the Gamma Ray Burst Coordinates Network (GCN) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). GSFC immediately forwarded the position to astronomers around the world. In response to this signal, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) team in Los Alamos, New Mexico, photographed the patch of sky where the GRB was occurring. Using precise information from instruments aboard the Italian-Dutch BeppoSAX satellite, the ROTSE team was able to locate the GRB within the images they had captured. Astronomer Scott D. Barthelmy of GSFC remarked that capturing a burst as it unfolded was the "holy grail" of GCN, and that, previously, optical telescopes had only seen the afterglow of a burst, never the burst itself.
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