1
00:00:00,010 --> 00:00:04,020
[Music] Announcer: Ten, Nine,

2
00:00:04,040 --> 00:00:08,070
Eight, seven, six

3
00:00:08,090 --> 00:00:12,090
five, four, three, engines start

4
00:00:12,110 --> 00:00:16,120
one, zero, and liftoff of the... Narrator 1: NASA's Swift

5
00:00:16,140 --> 00:00:20,190
satellite rode to orbit on aboard a Delta rocket on November 20th, 2004,

6
00:00:20,210 --> 00:00:24,220
and is still going strong. Swift's unique instrumentation

7
00:00:24,240 --> 00:00:28,260
allows it to quickly locate an interesting high-energy outburst,

8
00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:32,300
automatically determine its position, and rapidly investigate it with

9
00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:36,340
ultraviolet, optical, and X-ray telescopes. Swift's 

10
00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:40,410
versatility has led to amazing observations across a wide swath of astronomy.

11
00:00:40,430 --> 00:00:44,420
Narrator 2: A seven-year campaign to monitor the center of our galaxy with 

12
00:00:44,440 --> 00:00:48,500
Swift, has given astronomers a unique bounty. It has more than 

13
00:00:48,520 --> 00:00:52,520
doubled the number of bright X-ray flares observed from our galaxy's central black hole

14
00:00:52,540 --> 00:00:56,570
and led to the discovery of a rare, highly magnetized, neutron

15
00:00:56,590 --> 00:01:00,620
star. Narrator 3: Swift's primary target is gamma-ray bursts,

16
00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:04,640
or GRBS, the biggest and most mysterious explosions

17
00:01:04,660 --> 00:01:08,670
in the cosmos. On April 13, 2010, the spacecraft

18
00:01:08,690 --> 00:01:12,710
Burst Alert Telescope cataloged its 500th GRB.

19
00:01:12,730 --> 00:01:16,720
Narrator 4: On September 16, 2012, NASA's Swift noticed

20
00:01:16,740 --> 00:01:20,760
a new, and rapidly brightening X-ray source. Additional X-ray 

21
00:01:20,780 --> 00:01:24,810
behavior told astronomers that the object at the center of this activity was previously

22
00:01:24,830 --> 00:01:28,830
unknown black hole.

23
00:01:28,850 --> 00:01:32,870
Narrator 2: Swift and other satellites used X-ray telescopes to monitor interactions between

24
00:01:32,890 --> 00:01:36,920
 a pair of gigantic stars. As the stars approach each other,

25
00:01:36,940 --> 00:01:40,940
their fierce outflows, called stellar winds, crash together at several

26
00:01:40,960 --> 00:01:44,970
million miles an hour. Reaching temperatures of millions of degrees, and creating 

27
00:01:44,990 --> 00:01:49,010
X-rays. Narrator 5: The Swift 

28
00:01:49,030 --> 00:01:53,060
UV mosaics allow us to study the evolution of young stars in the LMC and

29
00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:57,150
SMC, all in one view. These

30
00:01:57,170 --> 00:02:01,180
images are the highest-resolution wide-field surveys of the galaxies

31
00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:05,240
at ultraviolet wavelengths.

32
00:02:05,260 --> 00:02:09,300
Narrator 1: On January 21, 2014, astronomers

33
00:02:09,320 --> 00:02:13,320
discovered an exceptionally close stellar explosion in M82,

34
00:02:13,340 --> 00:02:17,350
a galaxy located about 12 million light-years away.

35
00:02:17,370 --> 00:02:21,410
Swift's ultraviolet/optical telescope imaged the brightening supernova the

36
00:02:21,430 --> 00:02:25,440
very next day. Narrator 3: When a neighboring red

37
00:02:25,460 --> 00:02:29,480
dwarf star, called DG CVn, erupted in an enormous X-ray

38
00:02:29,500 --> 00:02:33,540
flare on April 23, 2014, Swift caught it and 

39
00:02:33,560 --> 00:02:37,580
monitored the eruption. The blast was some 10,000 times more

40
00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:41,630
powerful than the biggest flare we've ever seen from our sun.

41
00:02:41,650 --> 00:02:45,680
Narrator 4: Three unusually long-lasting stellar explosions discovered by

42
00:02:45,700 --> 00:02:49,700
Swift established a previously unrecognized class of GRBs called

43
00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:53,730
ultra-long gamma-ray bursts. Astronomers think they arise from

44
00:02:53,750 --> 00:02:57,780
the catastrophic death of supergiant stars hundreds of times larger than the sun.

45
00:02:57,800 --> 00:03:01,820
Narrator 2: On March 28, 2011,

46
00:03:01,840 --> 00:03:05,920
Swift detected intense X-ray emission from a galaxy's supermassive black hole.

47
00:03:05,940 --> 00:03:10,080
Astronomers realized they were seeing the signature of a sun-like star

48
00:03:10,100 --> 00:03:14,150
being shredded by the black hole. Infalling gas was captured in

49
00:03:14,170 --> 00:03:18,250
an accretion disk, and powered an X-ray jet. Narrator 1: A

50
00:03:18,270 --> 00:03:22,260
record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy

51
00:03:22,280 --> 00:03:26,290
wowed astronomers around the world in April 2013. The 

52
00:03:26,310 --> 00:03:30,350
blast produced the highest-energy light ever detected from a GRB.

53
00:03:30,370 --> 00:03:34,370
UV, optical, X-ray and gamma ray observation

54
00:03:34,390 --> 00:03:38,410
from Swift provided valuable data. Narrator 4: Asteroids 

55
00:03:38,430 --> 00:03:42,480
crash all the time, but the effects dissipate quickly, so catching the aftermath

56
00:03:42,500 --> 00:03:46,500
of a recent collision in 2010 was something special. 

57
00:03:46,520 --> 00:03:50,530
Swift's ultraviolet vision helped astronomers rule out the possibility they were seeing a comet.

58
00:03:50,550 --> 00:03:54,570
Narrator 3: A GRB so bright it could have been

59
00:03:54,590 --> 00:03:58,580
seen by the naked eye? That's what Swift and ground-based telescopes

60
00:03:58,600 --> 00:04:02,610
detected on March 19, 2008, thanks to a GRB jet

61
00:04:02,630 --> 00:04:06,660
aimed almost directly at Earth. Incredibly, the light from this dying star

62
00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:10,670
began its travels 7.5 billion years ago.

63
00:04:10,690 --> 00:04:14,690
Narrator 2: On April 29, 2009, a five-second-long burst of

64
00:04:14,710 --> 00:04:18,710
gamma rays became the farthest explosion yet identified by Swift.

65
00:04:18,730 --> 00:04:22,720
Its light had been traveling for 13.14 billion years, placing it

66
00:04:22,740 --> 00:04:26,750
among the most distant objects known. Narrator 4: Using Swift

67
00:04:26,770 --> 00:04:30,770
observations, astronomers identified an abrupt slowdown in the rotation of a 

68
00:04:30,790 --> 00:04:34,820
neutron star. An event dubbed an "anti-glitch."

69
00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:38,880
The discovery holds important clues for understanding neutron star interiors,

70
00:04:38,900 --> 00:04:42,910
which contain some of the densest matter in the universe. Narrator 3: Swift

71
00:04:42,930 --> 00:04:46,920
observations, combined with theoretical research, have shown that

72
00:04:46,940 --> 00:04:50,930
colliding neutron stars are a likely explanation for gamma-ray bursts

73
00:04:50,950 --> 00:04:54,970
lasting less than two seconds.

74
00:04:54,990 --> 00:04:59,020
Narrator 1: NASA's Swift mission ushered in a new era of research into gamma-ray bursts.

75
00:04:59,040 --> 00:05:03,070
As Swift begins its second decade of operation, its

76
00:05:03,090 --> 00:05:07,110
speed, flexibility and versatility, make it an important

77
00:05:07,130 --> 00:05:11,140
platform for studying the most energetic and rapidly-changing phenomena

78
00:05:11,160 --> 00:05:15,170
in the cosmos. [Beeping]

79
00:05:15,190 --> 00:05:26,406
[Beeping]