Research Information System
2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies, İstanbul, Turkey, 9 - 11 June 2005, pp.717-721
Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) accidentally discovered by American Vela military satellites some fourty years ago are transient celestial events, lasting milli-seconds to 10's of minutes. They are considered as the most powerful explosions in the whole Universe. About once per day, at some random location in the sky, a shower of gamma-ray photons with energies from about 1keV to 100MeV appears and we can not guess where they will occur next in the sky. Hence their observing and studying have been very difficult. To overcome these difficulties, astronomers designed special purpose detectors such as Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE). To understand these events, astronomers want to study their afterglows in x-rays, optical and radio waves when a GRB occur. The ROTSE Project is conceived by Univ. of Michigan scientists (Akerlof et al., 1991) and financed by NASA. It aims to achieve the detection of optical emission from GRBs simultaneous or just after the event. The ROTSE system can move quickly on the coordinates of the burst which is usually announced through Internet.