ISRO’s AstroSat has successfully detected its 600th Gamma-ray Burst (GRB), an event named GRB 231122B.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)
- Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are short-lived bursts of gamma-ray light, the most energetic form of light.
- Lasting anywhere from a few milliseconds to several minutes, GRBs shine hundreds of times brighter than a typical supernova and about a million trillion times as bright as the Sun.
- When a GRB erupts, it is briefly the brightest source of cosmic gamma-ray photons in the observable Universe.
- Long-duration bursts last anywhere from 2 seconds to a few hundreds of seconds (several minutes), with an average time of about 30 seconds. They are associated with the deaths of massive stars in supernovas; though not every supernova produces a gamma-ray burst.
- Short duration bursts are those that last less then 2 seconds; lasting anywhere from a few milliseconds to 2 seconds with an average duration of about 0.3 seconds (or 300 milliseconds). These bursts appear to be associated with the merger of two neutron stars into a new black hole or a neutron star with a black hole to form a larger black hole.
AstroSat
- AstroSat is the first dedicated Indian astronomy mission aimed at studying celestial sources in X-ray, optical and UV spectral bands simultaneously.
- AstroSat with a lift-off mass of 1515 kg was launched on September 28, 2015 into a 650 km orbit inclined at an angle of 6 deg to the equator by PSLV-C30 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.
- The minimum useful life of the AstroSat mission is expected to be 5 years.
