NASA Satellite Blinded Temporarily By Gamma Ray Blast
July 16th, 2010 - 8:44 pm ICT by GDBy Ranjan Bhaduri
July 16, (THAINDIAN NEWS) In a recent development, a huge and powerful blast of gamma rays blinded a NASA telescope and it created sensation among the scientists’ community worldwide. The telescope is in NASA’s Swift orbiting space observatory. The report was first published by the Pennsylvania University. It happened when star was metamorphosing in to a black hole. This is the cosmic x-ray blast which has turned out to be the brightest one among the recorded lot. The incredible thing is that the blast took place from a star that died a whopping 5 billion years back.
A gamma ray blast occurs when a huge star sinks into a black hole. The swift telescope could not handle the brightness of the blast. The NASA scientists said that huge number of protons were hitting the sensors of the telescope and it failed to handle them after a point. The Swift telescope is the result of collaboration between a project between UK, Italy and NASA. Such electromagnetic blasts happen in distant galaxies and the lights may take thousands of years to reach the telescope in the Earth. Such blasts can last for a few seconds and also for some minutes. The blasts are also succeeded by an afterglow which can be alarmingly bright.
The blasts like the one which blinded the telescope occur rarely. The telescope on the Swift observatory was made to record gamma ray blasts but the intensity of this blast far exceeded its capacity. The blast reportedly had a brightness of 143,000 X-ray photons a second. The scientists are yet to recover fully from the astonishing development.
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Tags: afterglow, black hole, blasts, distant galaxies, gamma ray, gamma rays, intensity, nasa, nasa satellite, nasa scientists, nasa telescope, number of protons, pennsylvania university, ranjan, sensation, sensors, sinks, space observatory, swift, x ray