Compton Observatory Data Deepen the Mystery of the Gamma‐Ray Bursters
FEB 01, 1992
DOI: 10.1063/1.2809523
To monitor Soviet compliance with the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, the US deployed the Vela series of military satellites, instrumented to detect sudden bursts of gammas. The surveillance satellites did indeed find dozens of gamma bursts, but by 1967 it was clear that these were not instances of Soviet cheating. They were coming from all directions of the sky above. The Vela satellites had inadvertently discovered a new class of celestial phenomena. Not until 1973 did the military allow this new discovery to be made public.
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© 1992 American Institute of Physics
