TIME
RESOLVED
ASTROPHYSICS
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TIMERESOLVEDASTROPHYSICS |
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OverviewScienceMethodsOPTICON-JRAOPTICON-Network |
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.
