What are some of the important discoveries made by CGRO?
Observations by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) showed that even faint gamma-ray bursts are isotropic and homogeneous, demonstrating that GRBs originate at very large distances. The first observation, in January 1999, of optical emission during the burst phase of a gamma-ray burst was made possible by a location provided by the BATSE instrument on CGRO. Recent analysis of observations made with the EGRET instrument demonstrated the existence of a population of gamma-ray sources in Gould’s Belt. EGRET and COMPTEL have also observed variable Active Galactic Nuclei. OSSE discovered a cloud of positrons near the center of our galaxy.
