Time Resolved Astrophysics


beta-test version



TIME


RESOLVED


ASTROPHYSICS




Overview


Science


Methods


OPTICON-JRA


OPTICON-Network



Overview    

Astronomers have been the keepers of time since the beginning of recorded history. Astrophysics deals with time-spans as long as the age of the universe (Hubble-time), equivalent to 13.6 billion years, and studies phenomena as fast as the modulation of pulse-profiles in rotating neutron stars, lasting a nanosecond. Throughout this range of 26 orders of magnitude, modern astrophysics sometimes reaches amazing precision. The age of the universe in known to within a few percent, the rotation of pulsars can be determined with a precision of 0.000 000 000 000 001 s in well studied cases. While astronomy is traditionally considered to deal with objects that change on rather long timescales (the "eternal" stars), modern astrophysics revealed a plethora of very fast phenomena: Gamma-ray bursts, the biggest explosions in the cosmos, typically last for seconds only. Nevertheless, they can be traced throughout the entire universe and many billions of years backwards in time. They are but one example of the necessity to study the universe at high temporal resolution. Not only the sciencific questions as such require detectors which permit high temporal resolution. They are necessary to time-tag photons in order to detect the high-energy emission of astrophysical objects, to time pulsars for fundamental studies of general relativity, or to overcome limitations imposed by our rapibly changing atmosphere. In order to exploit new technological developments for astrophysics at high temporal resolution, an informal network is set up, providing a forum for interested astronomers and technicians. Some of us have teamed up to form a network, supported by the I3 grant to OPTICON in FP6 of the EC. There also is a JRA within the same project, aiming at improving current capabilities of some detector technologies.

Science    


Methods