Mushroom-like telescopes capture cosmic signals

This Picture of the Week shows mushrooms growing atop ESO’s La Silla Observatory, in Chile, bathed in the dim light of the sunset. Wait… these are not mushrooms, but telescopes! To the left stands the Danish 1.54-metre telescope and to the right, the three telescopes of the BlackGEM telescope array.

The Danish 1.54-metre telescope has over 40 years of astronomical research on its shoulders. It observed for the first time the visible light associated with quick energetic events known as short gamma-ray bursts, showing that these explosions likely result from the fusion of two neutron stars. Operated jointly by research groups in Denmark and the Czech Republic, you can see this telescope hard at work every night via its dedicated webcam.

This telescope doesn’t exclusively study these energetic events, but BlackGEM, developed in The Netherlands and Belgium, was specifically designed to do so. When large objects like neutron stars merge, they create waves in the fabric of space-time, much like ripples on a lake. As soon as the rough location of these events has been determined by gravitational wave detectors like LIGO and Virgo, BlackGEM scans the area to hunt for any visible glow that wasn’t there before.

These events are extremely difficult to track and to differentiate from other phenomena across the night sky. For this reason, BlackGEM is using the help of citizens to find real explosions. It may be time to transform your smartphone into a pocket “mushroom” telescope...