[Music] Announcer: Ten, Nine,
Eight, seven, six
five, four, three, engines start
one, zero, and liftoff of the... Narrator 1: NASA's Swift
satellite rode to orbit on aboard a Delta rocket on November 20th, 2004,
and is still going strong. Swift's unique instrumentation
allows it to quickly locate an interesting high-energy outburst,
automatically determine its position, and rapidly investigate it with
ultraviolet, optical, and X-ray telescopes. Swift's
versatility has led to amazing observations across a wide swath of astronomy.
Narrator 2: A seven-year campaign to monitor the center of our galaxy with
Swift, has given astronomers a unique bounty. It has more than
doubled the number of bright X-ray flares observed from our galaxy's central black hole
and led to the discovery of a rare, highly magnetized, neutron
star. Narrator 3: Swift's primary target is gamma-ray bursts,
or GRBS, the biggest and most mysterious explosions
in the cosmos. On April 13, 2010, the spacecraft
Burst Alert Telescope cataloged its 500th GRB.
Narrator 4: On September 16, 2012, NASA's Swift noticed
a new, and rapidly brightening X-ray source. Additional X-ray
behavior told astronomers that the object at the center of this activity was previously
unknown black hole.
Narrator 2: Swift and other satellites used X-ray telescopes to monitor interactions between
a pair of gigantic stars. As the stars approach each other,
their fierce outflows, called stellar winds, crash together at several
million miles an hour. Reaching temperatures of millions of degrees, and creating
X-rays. Narrator 5: The Swift
UV mosaics allow us to study the evolution of young stars in the LMC and
SMC, all in one view. These
images are the highest-resolution wide-field surveys of the galaxies
at ultraviolet wavelengths.
Narrator 1: On January 21, 2014, astronomers
discovered an exceptionally close stellar explosion in M82,
a galaxy located about 12 million light-years away.
Swift's ultraviolet/optical telescope imaged the brightening supernova the
very next day. Narrator 3: When a neighboring red
dwarf star, called DG CVn, erupted in an enormous X-ray
flare on April 23, 2014, Swift caught it and
monitored the eruption. The blast was some 10,000 times more
powerful than the biggest flare we've ever seen from our sun.
Narrator 4: Three unusually long-lasting stellar explosions discovered by
Swift established a previously unrecognized class of GRBs called
ultra-long gamma-ray bursts. Astronomers think they arise from
the catastrophic death of supergiant stars hundreds of times larger than the sun.
Narrator 2: On March 28, 2011,
Swift detected intense X-ray emission from a galaxy's supermassive black hole.
Astronomers realized they were seeing the signature of a sun-like star
being shredded by the black hole. Infalling gas was captured in
an accretion disk, and powered an X-ray jet. Narrator 1: A
record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy
wowed astronomers around the world in April 2013. The
blast produced the highest-energy light ever detected from a GRB.
UV, optical, X-ray and gamma ray observation
from Swift provided valuable data. Narrator 4: Asteroids
crash all the time, but the effects dissipate quickly, so catching the aftermath
of a recent collision in 2010 was something special.
Swift's ultraviolet vision helped astronomers rule out the possibility they were seeing a comet.
Narrator 3: A GRB so bright it could have been
seen by the naked eye? That's what Swift and ground-based telescopes
detected on March 19, 2008, thanks to a GRB jet
aimed almost directly at Earth. Incredibly, the light from this dying star
began its travels 7.5 billion years ago.
Narrator 2: On April 29, 2009, a five-second-long burst of
gamma rays became the farthest explosion yet identified by Swift.
Its light had been traveling for 13.14 billion years, placing it
among the most distant objects known. Narrator 4: Using Swift
observations, astronomers identified an abrupt slowdown in the rotation of a
neutron star. An event dubbed an "anti-glitch."
The discovery holds important clues for understanding neutron star interiors,
which contain some of the densest matter in the universe. Narrator 3: Swift
observations, combined with theoretical research, have shown that
colliding neutron stars are a likely explanation for gamma-ray bursts
lasting less than two seconds.
Narrator 1: NASA's Swift mission ushered in a new era of research into gamma-ray bursts.
As Swift begins its second decade of operation, its
speed, flexibility and versatility, make it an important
platform for studying the most energetic and rapidly-changing phenomena
in the cosmos. [Beeping]
[Beeping]