What is the Gamma-Ray Bursts Coordinates Network, and what is it used for?
Barthelmy: It’s a collection of computers and programs that collect all the information on gamma-ray bursts from all the instruments and missions that are in orbit right now. It collects it all in real time from the telemetry that is coming down from the missions, from the satellites, and it processes it, finds the gamma-ray bursts’ positions, and then sends that out in real time, with no humans in the loop, to approximately 600 people around the world who are doing gamma-ray burst follow-up activities and research. Some of them have robotic telescopes where the telescope just slews over to the latest burst location that may be only 10 or 20 seconds old. Those ground-based telescopes start taking data…some of them are radio, most of them are optical, and some of them are infrared. It also sends information to humans via email on their cell phones and pagers and directly to their desktop computers, or wherever they choose to receive it so they can be aware of what’s going on, that a bur
