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Michael Braukus

Headquarters, Washington, D.C.


May 28, 1991
(Phone: 202/453-1549 )

Jim Sahli
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone: 205/544-0034 )

RELEASE: 91-81

NASA SCIENCE INSTRUMENT OBSERVING GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

The Burst and


Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), one of four instruments
on NASA's Gamma Ray Observatory, is detecting gamma-ray bursts
with a greater sensitivity than previous instruments,
according to the principal investigator speaking at an
American Astronomical Society conference in Seattle, Wash.

"We are
detecting gamma-ray bursts at a higher rate and in much
greater detail than ever before," said Dr. Gerald Fishman, a
NASA astrophysicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center,
Huntsville, Ala., and principal investigator for BATSE.

"Gamma-ray
bursts are being observed by BATSE at the rate of
approximately five per week or an extrapolated rate of about
250 per year. Previously, gamma-ray bursts were seen by the
KONUS Soviet experiment aboard the Venera spacecraft at a rate
of about 80 per year," said Fishman. "The large area and high
sensitivity of the BATSE detectors will permit more detailed
studies of the gamma-ray bursts which, in turn, may help to
explain the cause of the still-unexplained bursts," he said.
"Pulsing
sources, solar flares and other high-energy objects also are
being observed routinely with a high sensitivity. The data
coming back are of high quality and quantity, and we expect
that a large number of high-energy astrophysicists will be
kept busy analyzing and interpreting the data for years," he
said.

Dr. Fishman
told colleagues that gamma-ray bursts, which are random,
powerful flashes of gamma-rays coming from different locations
of the sky, are one of the least understood phenomena in
astrophysics and with BATSE we can learn more about them over
the next few years.

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The analysis of
the information gained by the BATSE instrument from the
gamma-ray bursts is being conducted by scientists from the
Marshall center, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the
Universities Space Research Association, the University of
California at San Diego, and the Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md. In addition, 26 guest investigator scientists
from the United States and Europe also will participate in
this initial phase of the data analysis.

"The scientists at Marshall continue to work 7 days


a week using numerous computer programs to catalog, store and
then analyze data from BATSE.

"Over a six
month period, a pattern will begin to emerge and we will begin
to learn more about the distribution, strength and direction
of these mysterious gamma-ray bursts," said Fishman.

After a
month-long activation and checkout period, the Gamma Ray
Observatory began routine science operations on May 16. The
observatory is managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center for
NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications, Washington,
D.C.

- end -

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