Gamma ray bursts
are believed to be the most energetic phenomena in the universe.
In one second they can emit more than 100 times the energy that
the sun does throughout its entire 10 billion year life. This energy
output is short lived, however, and within days the burst has faded
forever beyond the reach of our telescopes.
3000 bursts having been detected through their gamma ray emission,
only 30 have been seen with ground-based telescopes, and only one
of these has been observed within an hour.
In an ambitious
project to detect the gamma ray bursts in the crucial first minute
of their occurence, the School of Physics has entered a collaboration
with the University of Michigan, Los Alamos National Laboratories,
and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to place a robotic telescope,
ROTSE-III, at Siding Spring Observatory.
triggered into action by a signal relayed through the Internet from
an earth-orbiting satellite. The specially designed mounting for
ROTSE-III allows it to point to any position in the sky and take
an image within 5-10 seconds. The images are then automatically
analysed for any new or rapidly varying sources, and this information
is made available to other observatories throughout the world within
minutes. The precise positions provided by ROTSE-III are essential
to allow the worlds largest telescopes to observe the gamma
for the new telescope occurred in March 2001. The enclosure and
weather station were installed in April 2001, with the telescope
itself to be delivered in mid-2002.