A powerful new telescope is helping scientists monitor the collision of neutron stars or dead suns.
While NASA's James Webb telescope is busy exploring outer space and sending amazing photos of galaxies back to Earth, one revolutionary telescope is scanning the skies for colliding dead suns and helping scientists better understand physics. The new telescope is called the Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO), which is located on the volcanic island of La Palma in Spain.
According to Interesting Engineering, the new Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer is made up of two jet-black batteries of eight cylindrical telescopes that are bolted together. To cover different parts of the sky, the GOTO instrument rapidly twists and turns vertically and horizontally to capture the collision of dead suns, which are known as neutron stars.
How Do Scientists Study Colliding Dead Stars Using the GOTO?
Astronomers in 2017 had, by sheer luck, observed the collision of two neutron stars. Afterwards, British scientists built the Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer to systematically hunt for these occurrences.
Warwick University's Prof. Danny Steeghs explained to the BBC that it is important to move quickly whenever a "good detection" occurs. He remarked, "We are looking for something very short-lived - there's not much time before they fade away."
Scientists have to move quickly to gather data on colliding dead suns as it occurs very rapidly and disappears within two days. A neutron star is a dead sun that has collapsed under its own immense weight, as just one teaspoon of its material weighs up to four billion tons.
Neutron stars also have strong gravity that they are drawn to each other, causing a collision and then merging. This collision causes a flash of light and a powerful shockwave called a gravitational wave that is felt across the universe and distorts space.
Operators of the Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer aim to locate the collision within hours of it occurring or within minutes of a gravitational wave detection. Scientists then take the GOTO's images and digitally remove the stars, planets, and galaxies that were present the night before.
Any speck of light that was not present the night before may be the dead suns colliding. Traditionally, the process takes days or weeks, but with the GOTO, scientists can now do it in real time.
The Importance of Capturing the Collisions of Dead Suns in Understanding the Universe
Upon identifying the collision using the Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer, scientists then utilize larger, more powerful telescopes found in other parts of the world that help examine the neutron stars' collision in greater detail and at different wavelengths. But that does not mean the GOTO's role in studying these occurrences is minimal.
In a press release, Professor Rene Breton of The University of Manchester, who is one of the GOTO project partners, explained that there is great importance of detecting gravitational waves and the collisions that caused it. Breton described the "'time-lapse' picture of the sky" that the Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer captures as "a gold mine to study variability in other astronomical objects and search for transient phenomena unconnected to gravitational wave events."
GOTO is designed to address an observational gap by searching for optic signals in the electromagnetic spectrum that may indicate the source of the gravitational wave and determining the source so that a fleet of other telescopes and instruments can focus on it and gather more information. The Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer was granted £3.2 million or more than $3.8 million in funding by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for the deployment of the full-scale facility.
