University of Alabama Assists in Detection of Crab Nebula Gamma Rays Using Innovative Telescope

By University of Alabama

Please CLICK HERE to visit the Alabama NewsCenter website to see this article in its entirety and any other images or videos that go with the article.

Researchers at the University of Alabama are part of an international team of scientists that used a prototype telescope to detect energetic gamma rays from the Crab Nebula, the remnant of a supernova explosion, opening doors for future discoveries.

The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT), which began operations in Arizona earlier this year, detected gamma rays from the Crab Nebula, the brightest steady source of very high energy gamma-rays in the sky, as a way of proving the telescope’s technology.

“Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light and, as such, they reveal some of the most energetic objects in the universe, such as supermassive black holes at the cores of distant galaxies or supernova remnants, in ways that would not be possible with visible light alone,” said Marcos Santander, UA assistant professor of physics and astronomy. ”The technology in this telescope will revolutionize gamma-ray astronomy at the highest observable energies in the coming decades.”

Category: ALL POSTS, Partner News Stories