Special Edition: Compton

In human speak please!

The second satellite of NASA’s four Great Observatories program, Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) was launched in 1991. Compton included four instruments; the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment (OSSE), the Imaging Compton Telescope (COMPTEL), and the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET). Each instrument covered different, but often overlapping, regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, which allowed Compton to observe between 20 keV to 30 GeV, or 20,000 eV to 30,000,000,000 eV! By contrast the human eye only observes from 1.6 eV to 3.1 eV.

Compton observed for over nine years and was safely de-orbited into Earth’s atmosphere in 2000.

Is that all?

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory Misson – Goddard Space Flight Center’s Compton page.

Multimedia? Yep, we’ve got it right here!

CGRO Images – Goddard Space Flight Center’s Compton Image Gallery.