Experience Powerful Gamma-ray Burst GRB 190829A | DESY
The most powerful events in the known universe—gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)—are short-lived outbursts of the highest-energy light. Dive into a cosmic experience in this animation about Gamma-ray Burst GRB 190829A that happened in our cosmic backyard, a "mere" billion light years away. See what happens in a GRB, and how the gamma-ray observatory High Energy Stereoscopic System H.E.S.S. in Namibia, southern Africa, followed the event.
In a distant galaxy, a massive dying star collapses and a neutron star or black hole forms. Relativistic jets break out of the collapsing star, and a supernova is produced. The jet ploughs through the surrounding gas sweeping up particles. Particles scatter on magnetic fields around the blast wave and are accelerated. The accelerated electrons emit high energy photons in the X-ray and gamma-ray regime at every deflection. This emission is called synchrotron radiation. Relativistic beaming occurs in the jet direction. When looking exactly down a jet, the event becomes visible as a gamma-ray burst (GRB).
Roughly 900 million years later, radiation from this gamma-ray burst arrives at Earth and is detected by satellites and telescopes as GRB 190829A. High-energy photons hitting Earth's atmosphere produce particle showers that emit so-called Cherenkov light for a couple of nanoseconds. This glow can be detected by telescopes such as H.E.S.S. This way, H.E.S.S. could follow GRB 190829A for three nights in a row in unprecedented detail.
The H.E.S.S. Site in Namibia:
https://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/HESS/pages/about/site/
Video Credits: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Science Communication Lab, ("Swift" model data from NASA model database)
Duration: 2 minutes
No comments:
Post a Comment