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Comptons Legacy
Highlights from the Gamma Ray Observatory
he highly productive and long-lived Compton
Gamma Ray Observatory mission which documented
a previously little-known world of gamma-ray bursts, unusual
pulsars, and black-hole-fueled particle jets has come to an
end with the failure of one of the satellites three gyroscopes.
On March 24th NASA announced the decision to direct the
satellite back to Earth. If all goes according to plan, Compton
will glide into Earths atmosphere during the first days of
June, less than a month after this issue of Sky & Telescope goes
to press. At 17 tons, Compton is too large to burn up entirely
on reentry. Therefore it must be politely guided toward the
NASA
48
Instrument:
Energy range (MeV):
Pointing accuracy:
Field of view:
Mass (kg):
OSSE
COMPTEL
0.10 10
10
small
1.0 30
8.5
large
1,810
1,460
EGRET
Truth be told, Compton still had some juice left. All of its
instruments functioned more or less perfectly. NASAs decision
to deorbit was based mainly on the 1-in-1,000 chance of someone being injured should the spacecraft come down in a completely uncontrolled manner. Plan A called for a deorbit while
there are still two working gyroscopes, for two were deemed
necessary to steer the massive satellite safely. Deorbiting with
one gyro, should the other fail, would be a bit riskier.
NASA space-flight engineers, an ever-resourceful and audacious breed, said they could safely steer the spacecraft back to
Earth without any gyros. This group spent several months perfecting Plan B while some Compton scientists argued that the
satellite could be useful for observing the now-ongoing solaractivity maximum. In the end, NASA didnt want to chance it.
A tough loss, yes. But the Compton team realizes that its
satellite was wildly successful, a workhorse that lived many years
longer than expected. Reflecting on the mission, the team
boasts that Compton brought our understanding of gamma-ray
bursts, quasars, and pulsars to new levels. Here we summarize
but a few of the many hits from Comptons stellar career.
BATSE
976
Imaging Compton
Telescope
Energetic Gamma
(COMPTEL)
Ray Experiment
Telescope (EGRET)
Oriented Scintillation
Spectrometer
Experiment (OSSE)
Low-gain
antenna
High-gain
antenna
Gamma-Ray
Bursts
50 km
49
3C 279
Two-thirds of the way through Comptons career, the ItalianDutch BeppoSAX satellite discovered that many GRBs give off
X-rays hours after the gamma-ray flash. Furthermore, BeppoSAX has been able to determine the positions of these X-ray
afterglows with a precision of a few arcminutes roughly 50
times more precise than BATSE. Follow-up observations at visual and radio wavelengths have nailed down the cosmological
interpretation: redshifts for GRB counterparts range from
roughly 0.4 to 4.0, implying distances measured in billions of
light-years (S&T: February 1998, page 32). Thats way out there.
While BATSE provides only crude coordinates for GRBs, it
relays them to the astronomical community in near-real time.
The idea is that someone, somewhere will record the burst
with something before it fades from view. On January 23,
1999, BATSE helped a robotic camera catch the first visiblelight GRB counterpart seen to flare at the same time as the
gamma-ray flash. The burst briefly reached 9th magnitude
and would have been visible with good binoculars (S&T: May
1999, page 54).
BATSE may be in ashes, but there is gold in its treasure
chest of data. Characteristics of the bursts light curves may
enable astronomers to determine GRB distances, allowing the
bursts to be used as cosmological probes even when no visible-light counterpart is seen. This and other archival uses of
Comptons data may someday help astronomers figure out the
ultimate cause of GRBs.
Quasars are the extraordinarily
bright cores of very distant galaxies,
and they often are visible at radio and X-ray
energies as well as in ordinary light. This emission is likely produced by a supermassive black
hole accreting copious amounts of interstellar
gas (S&T: May 1999, page 40). Along with
gamma-ray bursts, quasars are among the most
distant objects known to science.
When Compton was launched, quasars were
not well understood. The only quasar seen in
gamma rays before Compton was 3C 273, detected in 1976 by the European Space Agencys
COS-B satellite. When Comptons EGRET in-
10
Gamma rays
1010
1012
1014
1016
1018
10 20
10 22
10 24
Frequency (Hertz)
3 1010
100
3 1014
Infrared
Microwave
Radio
10 2
10 4
10 6
3 1018
Ultraviolet X-rays
10 8
3 10 22
Gamma rays
10 10
10 12
10 14
Wavelength (meters)
Radio waves, visible light, and gamma rays are all composed of
photons particles of electromagnetic radiation that differ only
in wavelength. Gamma rays cannot penetrate Earths atmosphere, so
astronomical sources of them must be studied from orbit. Adapted
from Discovering the Cosmos by R. C. Bless.
Accretion disk
(cross-section)
Blazars
50
3C 279
100
Black hole
Shock
front
Jet
Ultraviolet
X-ray
Gamma-ray
Optical
Infrared
X-ray
Optical
Infrared
X-ray
Gamma-ray Radio
Radiation type
The positions of 2,408 gamma-ray bursts detected with BATSE suggest that the bursts took place billions of light-years away and are
more luminous than supernovae. Courtesy the BATSE team.
3C 273
1991
1992 (Low state)
1996 (Pre-flare)
1996 (Flare)
Visible
1,000
200
100
100
800
1,200
1,400
1,600
1,800
Supernova
Remnants
1,000
51
COMPTEL COLLABORATION
li n
es
S&T / STEVEN SIMPSON
el
fi
tic
52
Spin
axis
Pulsar wind
(particles)
ne
Neutron Stars
Radiation beam
(radio, visible light,
and/or X-rays)
M ag
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0.00
0.10
0.20
0.30
0.40
Geminga
0.50
0.60
0.70
0.80
0.90
1.00
Pulsar phase
Crab pulsar
Pulsed gamma rays have been detected by Compton from seven pulsars. But Geminga, on the Gemini-Orion border, stands out because
for years its pulses were seen only by X-ray and gamma-ray satellites.
(Other gamma-ray pulsars, like the Crab, generally were discovered
and first characterized with radio telescopes.) Courtesy the EGRET
team and NASA.
ally X-ray pulses were seen from this region, and EGRET found
a pulse period identical to that seen in X-rays, confirming that
Geminga is indeed a pulsar. Geminga has only recently been detected at radio wavelengths, where pulsars have been traditionally discovered (and some astronomers find the radio data unconvincing). Several of the 170 unidentified EGRET sources
may turn out to be Geminga-like pulsars.
Soft Gamma Repeaters (SGRs) are another class of neutron
stars that Compton has scrutinized profitably. SGRs sporadically emit short bursts of soft gamma rays, those with energies
below 10,000 electron volts. Before Compton, many thought
SGRs had something to do with neutron stars that have very
June 9, 1991
June 11, 1991
June 15, 1991
10
The evolution of three solar flares that took place just after the last
solar-activity maximum. Each curve is derived from gamma rays at an
energy of 2.223 million electron volts; such a photon is emitted from
a helium nucleus that has absorbed an extra neutron. Inset: While
coarse, this false-color COMPTEL image shows neutrons, not gamma
rays, from the June 15th flare, making a unique particle picture of
the Sun. Courtesy the COMPTEL collaboration.
Solar Flares
The Future
53
NASA
Ending in a
Blaze of Glory
Comptons undeniable
legacy is in the numbers.
The mission observed approximately 400 gammaray sources (not including GRBs); before
Compton, only about 40 were known. BATSE
detected more than 2,600 GRBs; before Compton, only about 300 had been logged. Scientific
journals publish roughly 180 Compton-specific
articles per year, about one every other day.
The Compton era will have ended as it began,
in suspense. The nail biting began back in April
1991, a few hours after Comptons release from
the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Comptons high-gain
antenna would not erect itself properly, and its loss would have
crippled the mission. Astronauts Jerry Ross and Jay Apt performed an unscheduled space walk to physically shake it loose.
The nail biting resumed last December with the news that
one of Comptons gyros had failed. Months of debate over
Comptons fate culminated with the decision to bring er on
home. If the players follow the script, during the first week of
June the mighty observatory will burn to silvery dust high
over the Pacific, south of Hawaii, where it may well be visible
to skywatchers along the path. A few stubborn chunks will
sink quietly to the bottom of the ocean.
No Compton spacecraft will adorn the halls of the Smithsonian Institutions National Air and Space Museum. But the
Compton legacy will remain on permanent exhibit in those
minds graced with fantastic visions of gamma-ray bursts,
black-hole jets, and all the other things that go boom no,
make that KABOOM in the night.
Peter Leonard and Christopher Wanjek work for Raytheon Information Technology and Scientific Services in support of NASA
space-science missions.
Just as the 17-ton Compton Gamma Ray Observatory loomed large in the bay of the Space Shuttle
Atlantis, its legacy will loom large in the annals of
high-energy astrophysics. NASA photograph.
54