The Gamma Ray Observatory - Integral, a satellite described as Europe's "black hole hunter" has gone into action and has sent its first images, as it sees the universe
The Gamma Ray Observatory - Integral, a satellite described as Europe's "black hole hunter" began operating and sent its first images, as it sees the universe.
The spacecraft is still in testing before full operation, but the initial data are of great interest to astronomers. One of the first images published in Paris on Tuesday (17/12/2002) is of a gamma ray burst (GRB).
The high-energy radiation stream, which lasted only 20 seconds, came from a violent event that occurred 5 billion light-years from Earth.
Gamma-ray burst events are violent but mysterious events that occur infrequently, but when they do occur they glow like hundreds of galaxies with many millions of stars.
The astronomers say that such an event could be caused by the explosion of huge stars, or by the collision of extremely massive neutron stars that together form a black hole.
In any case, it was precisely for such events that the Integer satellite was launched and the scientists reported in Paris that all the instruments of the spacecraft worked perfectly when they were asked to monitor and record the course of the event.
Integral, an acronym for the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, can observe the spectrum of gamma rays, X-rays, and visible light simultaneously. It was the European Space Agency that launched it on a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur in October. There is a high demand for satellite services and the European Space Agency says that astronomers can get observing time within a few weeks.