While ESA's satellite INTEGRAL was observing the sky, it spotted a burst of gamma-rays -- high-energy photons -- coming from the nearby galaxy M82. Only a few hours later, ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope searched for an afterglow from the explosion but found none. An international team realized that the burst must have been an extra-galactic flare from a magnetar, a young neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field.
The IBAS software gave an automatic localisation coinciding with the galaxy M82, 12 million light-years away. This alert system was developed and is operated by scientists and engineers from the UNIGE in collaboration with international colleagues."We immediately realised that this was a special alert.
However, in the past 50 years of gamma-ray observations, only three giant flares have been identified as coming from magnetars in our galaxy. These outbursts are very strong: one that was detected in December 2004, came from 30,000 light-years from us but was still powerful enough to affect the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, like the Solar flares, coming from much closer to us, do.
Carlo Ferrigno explains:"Our automatic data processing system is highly reliable and enables us to alert the community immediately." When unexpected observations like this are picked up, INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton can be flexible in their schedules, which is essential in time-crucial discoveries. In this case, had the observations been performed even just a day later, there would not have been such strong proof that this was indeed a magnetar and not a gamma-ray burst.
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