UCD ‘Watcher’ Robotic Telescope in Boyden Observatory, South Africa
On Friday May 26th, 2006 a gamma-ray burst was detected by NASA's Swift satellite and the coordinates were distributed to telescopes around the world via the internet. The UCD 'Watcher' robotic telescope in Boyden Observatory, South Africa, automatically responded, beginning observations 36 seconds after the start of the burst, just 19 seconds after the coordinates had been received and ahead of every other telescope on the planet.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are brief bursts of high-energy radiation that can occur anywhere in the sky, and are by the far the most brilliant sources in the universe. They occur roughly once per day and can last from about 30 milliseconds to one thousand seconds. “Detection of the visible light from GRBs is vital to advance our understanding of the physics of these explosive events, which are believed to be the sign of the collapse of very massive stars as they form black holes”, said Watcher principal investigator, Lorraine Hanlon, UCD School of Physics.
View of the star ‘eta carinae’ with its nebula, taken by UCD ‘Watcher’
Watcher began commissioning operations in late March, and began routine scientific observations only a few weeks ago. It is the first exclusively Irish research telescope at a high-quality astronomical site and has been funded by UCD and the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology. It is operated in collaboration with physicists at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
It was fortuitous that PhD student John French was sitting at his computer in UCD’s School of Physics when the gamma-ray burst started, and he immediately began downloading the images as they were taken. “The data is still coming in thick and fast from Watcher and other telescopes, but we know already that the afterglow behaviour is peculiar and we are working hard to interpret it. The burst occurred when the universe was roughly two billion years old.”
