Bali –
Astronomers have for the first time been able to detect collisions with dead suns known as neutron stars, thanks to a new, reliable telescope. The telescope is the Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO).
GOTO located above the clouds on the Spanish volcanic island of La Palma will now systematically hunt down the collision phenomenon. Neutron star collisions are key to our understanding of the universe.
They are thought to have created the heavy metals that formed stars and planets like Earth billions of years ago. The light from the collision was only visible for a few nights so telescopes had to race to find it.
Astronomers observed one of these collisions in 2017, but most discovered it by luck.
“When the really good detections come along, everything has to be done to the max,” said Prof Danny Steeghs, from the University of Warwick.
“Speed is of the essence. We are looking for something short-lived, not much time before they disappear,” he continued.
Neutron stars are so heavy that a tiny teaspoon of their material weighs four billion tons. The telescope allows astronomers to effectively open one of those tiny sections to see what’s inside.
In order to see the sky clearly, the telescope is located on top of a mountain, home to dozens of instruments of all shapes and sizes, each studying a different phenomenon.
When the twin domes open, they reveal two jet-black batteries of eight cylindrical telescopes fused together, this structure more like a rocket launcher. Each battery covers every swath of the sky above it by rotating rapidly vertically and horizontally.
A neutron star is a dead Sun that has collapsed under its immense weight, destroying the atoms that once made it shine. They have a strong gravity so they are attracted to each other. Eventually, they fell together and merged.
When that happens, they create flashes of light and shockwaves and powerful ripples throughout the universe. That event shook everything in the universe, including, imperceptibly, the atoms within each of us.
Shock waves, called gravitational waves, distort space. When detected on Earth, the new telescope jumps into action to find the exact location of the flash.
Operators find it within hours, or even minutes of gravitational wave detection. They took photos of the sky, then digitally erased the stars, planets and galaxies that were there the night before. Every point of light that didn’t exist before might be a colliding neutron star.
This would normally take days and weeks, but now it has to be done real time. This is a huge task, done using computer software.
“You would think that this explosion was very energetic, very luminous, it should be easy. But we have to search through a hundred million stars for the one object we are interested in. We have to do this very quickly because that object will disappear in two days,” said the professor. astrophysicist Dr. Joe Lyman.
The team is working with other astronomers to study the collision in more detail. Once they determine the collision, they turn to larger and more powerful telescopes around the world. It investigates collisions in more detail, and at different wavelengths.
“This process tells us about physics to the extreme,” explains Dr Lyman.
The top of the mountain brings astronomers a little closer to the stars. “With the telescope, they have a new way to peer into the cosmos,” said GOTO instrumentation scientist Dr Kendall Ackley.
Traditional astronomy is all about luck. “Now we no longer expect new discoveries. Instead, we are told where to find them, and reveal, piece by piece what is in the universe,” he concluded.
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