• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The Highest Resolution Gamma Ray Image Ever Has Been Taken

January 31, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Observing the most energetic events in the universe is not an easy task. They are so energetic that they are excellent at penetrating matter, so the traditional approach of telescopes – mirrors and detectors – has to be adapted to catch the powerful light of X-rays and gamma rays. Now, astronomers have revealed the most accurate of a neutron star’s gamma ray beam – the most accurate gamma ray image ever taken. 

This breakthrough image is of the Vela Pulsar, a well-known gamma-ray source. A pulsar is a degenerate stellar object not much bigger than a city, and we are seeing it from 800 light-years away. The resolution is 40 times better than the previous best image, and it is quite incredible. 

Advertisement
An image showing a bright pixelated dot over a dark background. That's the pulsar signal. A much wider circle is drawn around it showing the imprvement in resolution

The best image of the Vela Pulsar. The dashed circle is the previous resolution.

Image Credit: GRAINE collaboration (CC-BY)

The observations were taken by a new telescope designed for gamma rays. A stack of photographic film can trace gamma rays with high precision. The films are not stopping the powerful gamma rays but being stacked one over the other, they can record the direction of the gamma rays.

To remove the interference of the atmosphere, the stack was attached to a balloon that lifted it to an altitude of 35 to 45 kilometers (22 to 28 miles). The wind was moving the balloon and the telescope around, so cameras were used to understand the motion of the system. But there was a final issue.

The pancake stack is like a long-exposure but the film itself doesn’t record the time, so the team made sure that the bottom layers of the pancake would move at a precise speed. This allowed precise measurements between the camera-recorded motions and the tracing in the pancake. The result speaks for itself: the highest-resolution gamma-ray image.

“We captured a total of several trillion tracks with an accuracy of 1/10,000 millimeters. By adding time information and combining it with attitude monitoring information, we were able to determine ‘when’ and ‘where’ the events originated with such precision that the resulting resolution was more than 40 times higher than that of conventional gamma-ray telescopes,” Shigeki Aoki from Kobe University said in a statement.

This all-sky view from GLAST (now Fermi) reveals bright gamma-ray emission in the plane of the Milky Way (center), bright pulsars and super-massive black holes The vele pulsars is very large and bright in this version.

A gamma-ray sky map from NASA’s Fermi.

Image Credit: NASA/DOE/International LAT Team

The new approach can allow different and complementary approaches to gamma-ray observations, both on the ground and in space. Although it’s early days, it has great potential.

“By means of scientific balloon-borne experiments, we can attempt to contribute to many areas of astrophysics, and in particular to open up gamma-ray telescopy to ‘multi-messenger astronomy’ where simultaneous measurements of the same event captured through different techniques are required,” Aoki added. 

“Based on the success of the 2018 balloon experiment these data were generated with, we will expand the observation area and time in upcoming balloon flights and are looking forward to scientific breakthroughs in the field of gamma-ray astronomy.” 

The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Guinea opposition leader says he’s open to participate in transition following coup
  2. Freshworks targets nearly $10 billion in valuation with raised U.S. IPO price range
  3. Tennis-Fernandez eager to return to action after Sharapova pep talk
  4. New Gel Therapy 100 Percent Effective Curing Aggressive Brain Cancer In Mice

Source Link: The Highest Resolution Gamma Ray Image Ever Has Been Taken

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Brain Implant Enables Paralyzed Man To Feel And Use Objects Using Someone Else’s Hands
  • “This Is A Really Big Deal”: Brain Training Significantly Improves Key Neurochemical Levels In World First
  • “Wholly Unexpected”: First-Ever Fossil Paranthropus Hand Raises Questions About Earliest Tool Makers’ Identity
  • For Centuries, Nobody Knew Why Swiss Cheese Has Holes. Then, The Mystery Was Solved.
  • Scientists Studied The Infamous “Chicago Rat Hole” And They Have Some Bad News
  • Massive 166-Million-Year-Old Sauropod Footprints Become The Longest Dinosaur Trackway In Europe
  • Do Spiders Dream? “After Watching Hundreds Of Spiders, There Is No Doubt In My Mind”
  • IFLScience Meets: ESA Astronaut Rosemary Coogan On Astronaut Training And The Future Of Space Exploration
  • What’s So Weird About The Methuselah Star, The Oldest We’ve Found In The Universe?
  • Why Does Red Wine Give Me A Headache? Many Scientists Blame It On The Grape Skins
  • Manta Rays Dive Way Deeper Than We Thought – Up To 1.2 Kilometers – To Explore The Seas
  • Prof Brian Cox Explains What He Finds “Remarkable” About Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Story
  • Pioneering “Pregnancy Test” Could Identify Hormones In Skeletons Over 1,000 Years Old
  • The First Neolithic Self-Portrait? Stony Human Face Emerges In 12,000-Year-Old Ruins At Karahan Tepe
  • Women Are Diagnosed With ADHD 5 Years Later Than Men, Even With Worse Symptoms
  • What Is Cryptozoology? We Explore The History And Mystery Of This Controversial Field
  • The Universe’s “Red Sky Paradox” Just Got Darker: Most Stars Might Never Host Observers
  • Uranus And Neptune May Not Be “Ice Giants” But The Solar System’s First “Rocky Giants”
  • COVID-19 Can Alter Sperm And Affect Brain Development In Offspring, Causing Anxious Behavior
  • Why Do Spiders’ Legs Curl Up Like That When They’re Dead?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version