Scientists try to train telescope on long dead stars’ last flashes

BOISE, Idaho – Somewhere near the universe’s far edge, a massive star collapses.

A black hole forms, while a burst of gamma rays a million times brighter than our galaxy begins streaming through space at the speed of light.

Cut to several billion years later. It’s late summer 2007, in the Rocky Mountains back on Planet Earth.

Scientists and astrophysicists at Boise State University are developing a fast-moving robotic telescope for an observatory located 7,000 feet up in the White Cloud Mountains of central Idaho. Their aim: to capture optical images and other information about these cataclysmic stellar explosions, some of which occurred well before Earth was formed some 4 billion years ago.

It’s been 10 years since astronomers first documented the light that accompanies those still-mysterious gamma ray bursts on their billion-mile journey from exploding stars in deep space. That time, the afterglow – a final cry from a star that died when the universe was still in its infancy – lasted a week before fading forever.

The Idaho project, headed by BSU engineering professor John Gardner and astrophysicist Daryl Macomb, is trying to create a telescope capable of moving quickly enough to capture transient light that accompanies gamma ray bursts that last just seconds. Until now, these have gone largely unobserved, in part because moving large telescopes so rapidly could shatter their sensitive mirrors.

“If it’s too abrupt, it’s like hitting it (the mirrors) with a hammer,” said Gardner, in a BSU engineering laboratory where his 100-pound robotic telescope fork driven by three motors has been housed for seven years of on-again, off-again development that began with a $30,000 grant from NASA.

Within months, BSU computer science major Brett Nelson says he should have the computer program complete to guide the telescope.

That will allow the team in Idaho’s capital to finally move the 16-inch telescope into place near a mountain ranch near Challis that’s owned by a NASA scientist by late summer.

Nelson said the telescope must swing quickly, yet smoothly enough so that its delicate mirrors inside aren’t broken to bits. He’s got it down to about 10 seconds; the aim is just three.

“Doing it under 10 seconds would be quite a breakthrough,” said Lynn Cominsky, a physics and astronomy professor at Sonoma State University in California who is also working on the launch of a new NASA gamma-ray detecting satellite, projected for mid-December.

Some earthlings might know gamma rays from the 1970s TV show “The Incredible Hulk,” in which Dr. David Banner inadvertently turns himself into an enraged but benevolent green monster.

But serious efforts to track difficult-to-see gamma ray bursts from space – the highest energy, shortest wavelength electromagnetic radiation known to man – began accidentally in 1961, as the United States and Russia were clenched in their Cold War embrace.

The U.S. military launched satellites to monitor gamma ray bursts that are produced from atomic blasts, in an effort to keep tabs on the Soviet Union’s testing of its nuclear arsenal.

“Everybody wanted to know what the other was doing,” said Martin Pohl, an Iowa State University professor whose work includes creating theoretical models to help solve the mystery of gamma ray bursts – and how they can help explain the creation of our universe.

What the American generals soon discovered was, the gamma rays weren’t coming from Russia; the satellites were being bombarded from behind. Some speculated – errantly – the Soviets could be exploding atom bombs behind the moon.

It took until Feb. 28, 1997, however, before scientists on Earth with the help of a Dutch-Italian satellite finally observed the optical image of the afterglow that accompanied a gamma ray burst from space.

Since then, additional satellites have further fine-tuned gamma ray burst detection. Now, their location can be transmitted by these satellites to NASA computers in Maryland, which inform scientists and astronomers around the world who use their telescopes to observe them – if they’re fast enough.

With more speed, they may see not only the exploding star’s afterglow, but also light from the gamma ray burst itself.

“Getting a piece of the actual burst where the burst lasts only a few seconds is very elusive,” Sonoma State’s Cominsky said. “The only times it’s actually happened is when people have been lucky enough to have their telescopes pointing in the right direction when the burst occurs.”

That’s where the Idaho’s robotic telescope project could come in.

Macomb, the BSU astrophysicist, said reacting within seconds of a NASA gamma-ray alert could significantly add to scientists’ understanding of the rays. More speed could help better explain the origins of the tremendous explosions deep in space that generated the gamma rays.

It could help scientists discover more black holes, supernovas and conditions in the early universe.

“It could be that doing things a few seconds faster really matters,” Macomb said. “There’s something sort of special about the fact that you’re seeing something that happened at such a vast distance, but this information is just coming to you now.”