The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission
With Swift, a NASA mission with international participation, scientists will now have a tool dedicated to answering these questions and solving the gamma-ray burst mystery. Its three instruments will give scientists the ability to scrutinize gamma-ray bursts like never before. Within seconds of detecting a burst, Swift will relay a burst's 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.
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Swift Resources
Latest Swift Gamma-Ray Bursts
February 5, 2010 GRB100205A
February 3, 2010 GRB100203A January 19, 2010 GRB100119A + Swift Bursts from the First Four Years of Swift + Data Table of Swift Bursts + GCN Circulars Archive + GRB Skymap Latest Swift News
An international team of scientists, including two astronomers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have observed a supernova with peculiar radio emission. In the Jan. 28 issue of Nature, the team -- led by Zsolt Paragi of the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe, or JIVE -- reveals new details of these highly energetic explosions. A specialized camera on a telescope operated by U.K. astronomers from Liverpool has made the first measurement of magnetic fields in the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). The result is reported in the Dec.10 issue of Nature magazine by the team of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) astronomers who built and operate the telescope and its unique scientific camera, named RINGO. If you're a Swift Team or Project member looking for the Team or Project sites, try: NOTE: you will need your Team or Project username and password to access these sites. |
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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