During about 30 years astrophysicists tried without any success to solve one
of the most mysterious problems -- problem of nature of Gamma Ray Bursts.
Dozens of space experiments, dozens of dozens of theoretical papers just
were fogging the situation. Only in spring 1997, it becomes clear
that we deal with the most huge and powerfull phenomenon in the Universe.
The gamma-ray bursts is the most grand phenomena in the Universe, the human
confronts. There powerfull is million times more than quasar and active
galaxy nuclei luminocity. Super-Nova is the splinter in comparison with
Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB). If there is a burst of GRB in some
thousands light year fars from the Sun, the night would become the day, and
every living thing would be killed in the Earth.
The astronomers all over the world vainly tried to find out anything about the
of GRB during last 30 years. The distance was the only parameter, that had
been found last years, when the optical afterglow was detected.
Last saturday, on the 29-th of march, at about 15p.m., american space-telescope
abnormally bright burst. Australian astronomers detected the optical
afterglow soon using ground optical telescopes.
There is the first russian robotic telescope near Moscow, that detected
this object. MASTER(Mobile Astro
TElescope-Robots) is connected to the internet and acceptes the alerts system f
space gamma observatories. Main devices of MASTER were constructed during
the last years at private observatory, using the means of
director of
"Ochkarik" optical company S.M.Bodrov.
The idea of the experiment is to point the ground telescopes to the
coordinates during only a few seconds after the alert from the gamma-ray
observatory (i.e.alert about Gamma-Ray Burst). MASTER patrols the sky during
last year.
On the 29-th of March, 5 hours after the burst, MASTER had detected very
bright object. Observations of that object had been lasting for almost 10 hours
The scientists form Turkey, Italy, Spain and other countries joined us soon.
The brightness of the afterglow was unique, hundreds times more than usual.
Later, when the night came to Chili and the largest of ground telescopes(8m)
pointed to the coordinates of that GRB and detected its spectrum, it became
clear, that the burst was the nearest among the detected ones. The distance
was only some milliards light years.
Now all the largest ground telescopes observe this burst, and scientists all
over the world publishe their results of photometrical and spectroscopes
data. We are glad to say, that Russia is one of the first of them.
You can see the first in Europe image of optical afterglow of this GRB.
Vladimir Lipunov
Translated by Nataliya Tyutina
