However, BATSE's ability to count
the TGFs or measure their peak energies was limited. The analysis of additional data is ongoing ., and the
University of California, Berkeley, Calif. Neil Gehrels. Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope did not see an
afterglow. Theories
predict these collisions wouldn't produce a long afterglow , since there isn't
much fuel, such as dust and gas, from the objects or the region to sustain
one .edu

Who knows
what nature has in store for us as we push the boundaries even further ," says
Niel Brandt of Penn State University, University Park.
The JCMT is operated on behalf of the United Kingdom, Canada and
Netherlands by the Joint Astronomy Centre, Hilo, Hawaii.

holes strasbourg

The Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on the Compton Gamma-Ray
Observatory first discovered TGFs in 1994.
Smith worked with RHESSI principal investigator Robert Lin at UC Berkeley
and Christopher Barrington-Leigh, now at UBC, to plan ways they could use the
satellite for a range of investigations in addition to studying solar flares.html

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet, visit:

http://www.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and
flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

pathfinder xmm

If we can understand the process here, it might give us insights
into similar processes in less accessible parts of the universe, " said David
Smith, an assistant professor of physics at UCSC and first author of the
paper.
Their report was published last week in the journal Science.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/rhessi_tgf. WASHINGTON, NASA scientists have, for the first
time, detected and pinned down the location of a short gamma-ray burst,
lasting only 50 milliseconds. Bursts
lasting more than two seconds have been observed by NASA satellites such as
Swift, built to detect and quickly locate the flashes. "For the first time, we have real data to figure out
what these things are," he added.; Mullard Space
Science Laboratory in Dorking, Surrey, England; the University of Leicester,
England; Brera Observatory , Milan and ASI Science Data Center, Frascati,
Italy. The
Chandra X-ray data show that the supermassive black holes in the galaxies were
also growing at the same time.

asca responsibilities

Observations from RHESSI
raised the maximum recorded energy of TGFs by a factor of 10, and indicate
Earth gives off approximately 50 TGFs or more daily. Kulkarni is a
gamma-ray burst expert.
Additional observations are planned for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and
Chandra X-ray Observatory., was the prime development contractor for the
observatory.

pathfinder observatory

However, RHESSI's detectors
pick up gamma rays from a variety of sources.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz
(UCSC), University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the University
of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada , reported new findings about
these bursts of energy, called terrestrial gamma ray flashes (TGFs) . "What's exciting is we are getting data
good enough for the theorists to really test their models . The shorter ones, less than two seconds
and often just a few milliseconds, are the deeper mystery , because they have
been too fast for detailed observation. Ground-based telescopes have not definitely detected an afterglow.
Additional information and images are available at:

http://chandra.

asca timelines

In contrast, longer gamma-ray bursts tend to be in
young, distant galaxies filled with young, massive stars, remnants of the
early universe. The
spacecraft was built in collaboration with national laboratories, universities
and international partners, including Penn State; Los Alamos National
Laboratory, N.

For more information about Swift on the Internet , visit:

http://swift. Alexander is lead author of a paper
appearing in the April 7, 2005 issue of Nature that describes this work.

orbiting scheduling

RHESSI is part of NASA's Sun-Earth Connection program."
TGFs have been correlated with lightning strikes and may be related to
visible phenomena that occur in the upper atmosphere over thunderstorms.
RHESSI, a NASA Small Explorer spacecraft, was launched on Feb.
The submillimeter observations along with optical data from the Keck
observatory, also on Mauna Kea, indicate these galaxies had an unusually large
amount of gas.

asca timelines

WASHINGTON, Scientists using observations from
NASA's Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite
detected flashes of gamma ray energy in Earth's upper atmosphere in greater
detail than ever before.
"Regardless of the exact mechanism, there is some enormous particle
accelerator in the upper atmosphere that is accelerating electrons to these
very high energies, so they emit gamma rays when they hit the sparse atoms of
the upper atmosphere," Smith said. Most
scientists are convinced short and long bursts arise from two different
catastrophic origins. "The deeper we look into
the Universe with Chandra, the more fascinating things we find .edu

cowen strasbourg

The afterglow contains information about what caused the burst., manages the Chandra
program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

observer calibration

It was designed to
study X-rays and gamma rays from solar flares. 2, 2002. Short bursts had
remained elusive until May 9, when Swift detected the recent flash called GRB
050509B.nasa. The gas in each galaxy was forming into stars at a rate of
about one per day, or 100 times the present rate in the Milky Way galaxy .
These galaxies are very faint and it is only with the deepest observations
of the Universe that they can be detected at all.
The W.

ray orbiting

99 percent of the speed of light (186,000
mps), when they scatter off of atoms and decelerate in the upper atmosphere.
While it remains unknown exactly how electron beams accelerate fast enough
to produce TGFs, Smith said it may involve the build-up of electric charge at
the tops of thunder clouds due to lightning discharges. The astronomy community is
speculating on what may have caused the burst; perhaps a collision of two
older black holes or two neutron stars.
"It is exciting that these recent observations are in good agreement with
our simulation.

xmm strasbourg

This results in a
powerful electric field between the cloud tops and the ionosphere , the outer
layer of Earth's atmosphere.
The burst marks the birth of a black hole. M.

observatory timelines

"We are combing the region around the burst with the Keck Telescope in
Hawaii for clues about this burst or its host galaxy," said Shri Kulkarni,
from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. WASHINGTON, Distant galaxies undergoing intense
bursts of star formation have been shown by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
to be fertile growing grounds for the largest black holes in the Universe.

asca spacecraft

This is
consistent with the theory that short bursts come from older, evolved neutron
stars and black holes. We seem to be converging on a consistent picture of galaxy
formation with both observations and theory," said Di Matteo.

chandra orbiting

"This is a very interesting process involving extreme physics right here
on Earth. "The energies we see are as high as those of gamma rays emitted from
black holes and neutron stars," Smith said.
It is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
In contrast, afterglows from long bursts linger from days to weeks. Neutron stars are dense spheres about 20 miles across.7 billion light years away from Earth.

Era of Galaxy and Black Hole Growth Spurt Discovered

Collisions between galaxies in the early Universe may be the ultimate cause
for both the accelerated star formation and black hole growth.

galore pathfinder

RHESSI investigators plan to collaborate with other researchers to investigate
how various phenomena are related, Smith said.nasa. Swift autonomously locked onto the location, and the satellite
focused its onboard telescopes in less than a minute to capture the burst
afterglow.
The burst appears to have occurred near a galaxy that has old stars and is
relatively nearby, about 2. "What we are seeing so far is what proponents of the
merger theory have been saying all along," Kulkarni added.M.
The galaxies studied by Alexander and his colleagues are known as
submillimeter galaxies, so-called because they were originally identified by
the James Clerk Maxwell submillimeter telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea , Kailua,
Hawaii., and her
collaborators have shown that such mergers drive gas toward the central
regions of galaxies, triggering a burst of star formation and providing fuel
for the growth of a central black hole. Keck Observatory is operated by the California Association for
Research in Astronomy, Kamuela, Hawaii.

opens galore

NASA Satellite Observes Mysterious Earth Energy

gsfc.gov

For more information about this and other Swift-detected bursts on the
Internet, visit:

http://grb.sonoma.
The X-ray observations also showed that the black holes are surrounded by
a dense shroud of gas and dust. Recent sophisticated computer simulations performed by Tiziana Di
Matteo of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn.

galore observatory

It presents the
first analysis for TGFs covering the results from a search of three months of
RHESSI data.gov

By combining the deepest X-ray image ever obtained with submillimeter and
optical observations , an international team of scientists has found evidence
that some extremely luminous adolescent galaxies and their central black holes
underwent a phenomenal spurt of growth more than 10 billion years ago .

pathfinder ray

nasa.
Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe.
He is the Swift project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
(GSFC), Greenbelt, Md.
"The extreme distances of these galaxies allow us to look back in time,
and take a snapshot of how today's largest galaxies looked when they were
producing most of their stars and growing black holes," said David Alexander
of the University of Cambridge, UK.
Hubble Space Telescope observations indicate that most of the
submillimeter galaxies are actually two galaxies that are colliding and
merging.

observations opens

They are thought to be
emitted by electrons traveling at 99. The longer bursts appear to be from massive star
explosions in very distant galaxies.
Swift's X-ray telescope detected a weak afterglow that faded away after
about five minutes. Black
holes have no surface and are regions in space of infinite density. This
concurrent black hole and galaxy growth spurt is only seen in these galaxies
and may have set the stage for the birth of quasars -- distant galaxies that
contain the largest and most active black holes in the Universe.

responsibilities cowen

TGFs are very short blasts of gamma rays, lasting about one millisecond,
emitted into space from Earth's upper atmosphere.
All of this fits the pattern of a collision between some combination of
black holes or neutron stars, both of which are created during the deaths of
massive stars.
Swift is a NASA mission in partnership with the Italian Space Agency and
the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the United Kingdom .; Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif.harvard.

calibration holes

For more information, images and animations regarding this research on the
Internet, visit:

http://www.
"Seeing the afterglow from a short gamma-ray burst was a major goal for
Swift, and we hit it just a few months after launch ," said Dr. Penn State University controls science and flight
operations from the Mission Operations Center in University Park, Pa. This is probably the material that will be
consumed by the growing black holes. Northrop Grumman
of Redondo Beach, Calif.

xmm responsibilities

NASA Scientists Catch Unique Gamma-Ray Burst

In particular,
this work will help scientists to understand the observed link in the present
epoch between the total mass of stars in the central bulges of large galaxies
and the size of their central, supermassive black holes. With its 15-meter
(50-foot) diameter dish the JCMT detects light with "submillimeter"
wavelengths, between infrared light and radio waves on the wavelength scale.

This category lists sites especially for astronomical observatories with x-ray capabilities.

timelines chandra

calibration chandra

Swift is managed by GSFC.

telescopes asca

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