Last week the European southern Observatory (ESO) whetted the Internet news about the “unprecedented discovery”. And finally, the organization revealed that for the first time in history, astronomers observed gravitational waves and light, produced in the same event.
“This is a very important discovery because it gives us two very different methods to consider one thing,” says Brian Koberlein, astrophysicist and senior lecturer in the Institute of Technology of Rochester. “Imagine that you are trying to understand the detective at the hearing, not seeing pictures or just see the show without hearing it. When you combine the sound and picture, you get the full picture.”
The VIMOS, which depicted the galaxy NGC 4993, showing the merging pair of neutron stars in visible light
Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that were first predicted by albert Einstein nearly a century ago. Last year we first observed this phenomenon, and so far, all the gravitational waves that we observed was caused by a particularly intense events, such as the merger of neutron stars. This type of merge is also considered the most likely cause of short gamma-ray bursts, cosmic explosions that emit huge amounts of light.
17 Aug 2017 Observatory LIGO caught a gravitational wave passing through the Earth – for the fifth time. Just two seconds later, gamma ray space telescope NASA, Fermi lab and the international gamma-ray astrophysics, ESA has registered the short gamma-ray burst in the same region of the sky. This sequence has led scientists to believe that gravitational waves and the light were born one event.
Scientists have long suspected that the merger of two neutron stars should kilanova, the explosive phenomenon in a 1000 times brighter than the standard new. They suggested that the almost simultaneous observations of gravitational waves and gamma ray burst might indicate what happened this event, and the subsequent study of the European southern Observatory, indicates that this is exactly what happened: scientists have finally discovered celonova.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Stephen Smith, who led the observations with the New technology telescope of ESO. “Our data, together with data from other groups proved to everyone that it wasn’t a supernova and not a variable star in the foreground, and something absolutely amazing”.
A rare case
To allocate a separate laboratory, committed breakthrough discovery, this was truly a joint effort. A huge portion of the sky containing millions of stars, it was necessary to view after the initial discovery of gravitational waves, so efforts were made by various of the Observatory.
The first new point of light arose near lenticular galaxy NGC 4993 noticed the 1-meter Swope telescope in Cerro Las Campanas. This point is then observed telescopes Pan-STARRS and Subaru in Hawaii. In the coming weeks will be followed by new observations and analyses.
“We have entered a new era of astronomy is divided,” said Andrew Levan, lead author of one of the works. “The strength of ESO is that it has a wide range of telescopes and instruments capable of solving large and complex astronomical problems in the shortest possible time”.
The European southern Observatory announced “an unprecedented discovery” in space
Ilya Hel