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Gamma Ray Bursts
BATSE had an all-sky monitor that was capable of detecting a GRB virtually
anywhere in the sky. Over a period of 9 years BATSE recorded thousands of GRBs,
about 1 per day. Among other things, these results showed that the bursts
occurred at random all over the sky. If the bursts were associated with objects
in our Milky Way
Galaxy, they would not show such a universal distribution. Rather, they would
be concentrated along the plane of our galaxy like most of the matter in the
Milky Way. The BATSE data was so good that it allowed astronomers to also rule
out the possibility that the GRBs might be originating in the halo of our
galaxy.
2704 BATSE Gamma Ray Burst (Credit: NASA)
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