Breakthrough observations of GRB230328B 

The Nazarbayev University Transient Telescope located at the Assy-Turgen Observatory just made a unique and groundbreaking observation of a cosmic event called gamma-ray burst (GRB). GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the Universe. Despite decades of effort by the international scientific community, their exact nature and parameters remain elusive. 

We observed the gamma-ray burst GRB230328B at UT 2023-03-28 14:55:23, just 41 seconds after a trigger. This is the fastest ever optical multi-band observation of any GRB. We observe the event in green, red, and infrared bands simultaneously, which gives us insight about the spectrum of the signal. These observations were possible thanks to the unique characteristics of our telescope: its fast speed and simultaneous 3-channel cameras. The observation is already announced to the international scientific community (the announcement is available here). 

The observed data is currently being analyzed in-depth by a team of researchers at the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory of Nazarbayev University. Our analysis is expected to shed unique light into the nature of GRBs. 

Previously, the ECL team observed another event GRB201015A starting only 58 seconds after a trigger. Such an early observation allowed us to find evidence of so-called dust destruction during early evolution. Up to now, this was just a theoretical hypothesis proposed years ago by US scientists. These results are now published in the prestigious Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal. 

Published date: 29 March 2023

Oral presentation during 240th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society

Abstract “Early-time colour variations in the GRB 201015A afterglow” from Toktarkhan Komesh was accepted for oral presentation in the 240th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, 12–16 June 2022

Prof. Mehdi Shafiee Leads ECL’s MKIDs Cryogenic Detectors Research Group

Former ECL postdoc Mehdi Shafiee has moved from the prestigious Queens University, Canada back to Nazarbayev University as a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prof. Shafiee will head ECL’s program in next generation MKIDs cryogenic detectors. [March, 2022]

Special Seminar on Multimessenger Searches with HAWC and AMON

Prof. Hugo Ayala Solares of Penn State University, USA gave a special seminar on multimessenger astronomy. His talk covered general aspects of the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) and Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON) searching for multimessenger sources – some combination of light, cosmic rays, neutrinos, and gravitational waves. [February 17, 2022]

Prof. Ernazar Abdikamalov appears on Qazaq Main Broadcasting TV Channel Khabar 24

Associate Director of ECL Prof. Ernazar Abdikamalov participated in the “Science” program of the Khabar 24 TV channel and told the journalist how supercomputers and computing technology helps to make discoveries and promote scientific progress. For more details watch Khabar24. [January 27, 2022]

Prof. Katie Mack joins Perimeter as Hawking Chair in Cosmology

Prof. Katie Mack, who gave an ECL Autumn Colloquium last year on black holes, has just been named inaugural Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at Perimeter Institute. [December 8, 2021]

Astrophysics Research Skills and Career Development

Prof. Eric Linder shared valuable information on how to succeed in research and build essential skills for the career development with NU students in his talk Astrophysics Research Skills and Career Development. [November 5, 2021]

ECL Autumn 2021 Colloquia Series

Dr. Bruce Grossan, one of the key founders of the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory, gave a public talk entitled, Technology of NU’s Robotic Astronomical Telescope, the NUTTelA-TAO, revealing the nitty-gritty details of the fully automated telescope hunting for gamma-ray bursts. [October 22, 2021]

Dr. Lindsey Bleem delivered her public lecture, The Origins and Fate of the Universe as Observed from the Bottom of the World, at the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory Autumn Colloquia Series. [October 12, 2021]

Prof. Ofer Lahav from University College London delivered  a public lecture, entitled AI on our Planet and for exploring the Universe, followed by a discussion with Nobel Laureate Prof. George Smoot at the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory Autumn Colloquia Series. [September 28, 2021]

Galactic gamma ray bursts follow the ECL Scientists’ prediction

New astrophysical burst detections from a soft gamma repeater SGR 1935+2154 confirm 231-day cycle predicted in a peer-reviewed published paper by the ECL researchers, Dr. Mikhail Denissenya, Dr. Bruce Grossan, and Dr. Eric Linder. [July 2021]

Summer School at the Center for Astrostatistics at Penn State

Dr. Mikhail Denissenya attended the 16th Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers held by the Center for Astrostatistics at Penn State University. The School provides an intensive program in statistical inference. [June 2021]

More green Energy!

At Assy-Turgen Observatory, the ECL team increased the power supply from solar panels by 100%. Now, the NUTTelA-TAO rapid survey telescope receives 2,6 kW from green energy. [April  2021]

Physics World Magazine Features Eric Linder’s work on Dark Energy

“A new generation takes on the cosmological constant”, an article in Physics World magazine, highlights work by Eric Linder and collaborator Stephen Appleby on a possible solution to the century old cosmological constant problem. [March 2021]

Golden Webinar in Astrophysics

At the “Golden Webinar in Astrophysics” by UK Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, ECL’s Eric Linder was an invited panel member along with two Nobel Laureates, James Peebles and Adam Riess. [February 2021]

Smart Thursday at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS)

Dr. Mikhail Denissenya, participated in the online event “Smart Thursday” with more than 1800 participants organized by Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS). Mikhail shared his story and tips to motivate 7-12 grade secondary school students at NIS to pursue their own research careers. [January 21, 2021]

Seminar on the Next Generation Kinetic Inductance Detectors

Dr. Jie Hu from the University of Paris delivered a seminar, entitled “An Introduction to Kinetic Inductance Detectors“,  and highlighted the ongoing projects at the Astroparticle and Cosmology (APC) and the collaboration between APC and ECL. [December 2020]

Nobel Laureate Public Lectures on Merging Black Holes

Distinguished Visiting Professor of Nazarbayev University, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics, George F. Smoot delivered two public lectures on Gravitational Waves, Merging Black Holes and Merging Binary Neutron Stars and Interpretation of LIGO-Virgo GW Events in the light of increased statistics. [November  2020]

SPIE digital forum

SPIE digital forum, coference paper publication. B. Grossan, Z. Maksut, 2020, “Performance of the BSTI instrument on the NUTTelA-TAO telescope for high time-resolution, simultaneous three-channel imaging of prompt gamma-ray burst optical emission,” Proc. SPIE 11447, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy VIII, 114479I

ECL Autumn 2020 Colloquia Series

Dr. Vishal Gajjar delivered his public lecture, A New Era In The Search For Intelligent Life In The Universe, at the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory Autumn Colloquia Series. [October 21, 2020]

Prof. Katie Mack gave a public lecture, entitled How to See a Black Hole, for the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory Autumn Colloquia Series. [October 13, 2020]

Paper on UFA instrument testing at the NUTTelA telescope accepted for publication:

“On-sky SiPM Performance Measurements for Millisecond toSub-Microsecond Optical Source Variability Studies” accepted to JATIS 2020 Nov. 6.   

Authors: Albert Wai Kit Lau, Mehdi Shafiee, George Smoot, Bruce Grossan, Siyang Li, and Zhanat Maksut

Paper Number: JATIS 20053RR

Grant Winning

Congratulations to our ECL postdoctoral scholar Dr. Bekdaulet Shukirgaliyev for winning a Ministry of Education and Science grant (~70 million tenge) with the highest score in Kazakhstan. The project “Star Cluster dissolution mechanisms in the Milky-Way-like galaxies” will implemented at ECL in the next 3 years. [October, 2020]

Distinguished Academic Award of the Korean Astronomical Society

ECL congratulates Prof. Arman Shafieloo of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), honored with the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Korean Astronomical Society. Arman has been a frequent visitor to and collaborator with ECL, and hosted ECL postdocs and students at KASI. He was the inaugural postdoc hired by Linder and Smoot at their Institute for the Early Universe, Korea, and we look forward to ECL postdocs becoming in turn distinguished scholars in their career! [September 2020]

Observation of SWIFT GRB 200925B

ECL’s rapid response telescope, NUTTelA-TAO observed the SWIFT GRB 200925B (trigger number #997453). The telescope started observation of the field of GRB 200925B 45 s after GRB trigger time (2020-09-25 21:50:37 UT). Research team found early afterglow on 3 bands. We anticipate additional analysis in 15-30 days after our GCN Circular #28511. Some earlier images may have usable data. Check back soon: GRB200925B. [October 2020]

ECL’s NUTTelA-TAO Responds in 7 Seconds

ECL’s rapid response telescope, NUTTelA-TAO (Nazarbayev University Transient Telescope at Assy-Turgen Astrophysical Observatory) responded to NASA’s gamma-ray burst (GRB) alert in seven seconds, successfully demonstrating the ECL Experimental Group’s autonomous software. On August 19 at 21:45, NASA sent a real-time GRB alert to observatories around the world. In one second, NUTTellA-TAO processed NASA data and in seven more, it autonomously deployed and started taking images. “It turned out that the source (of gamma-ray burst) was located near the Galactic plane with a strong optical absorption (latitude = 0.45, longitude = 126.8 degrees), which increases the likelihood that this was a new galactic transition process. Despite the fact that the gamma-ray burst captured by the telescope was weak, we can still say that we got the first technical result confirming that our observatory can work in an autonomous mode and has successfully started observations without being operated by a human. Now we need to proceed with our work, patiently wait for the next bright gamma-ray burst and then, take images of it,” said researcher of the Project Group of the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory NU. [August 2020]

APCTP Inaugural Lecture

Eric Linder gave the inaugural lecture, entitled All Cosmology, All the Time, for the Asia-Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics (APTCP) series “Dark Energy in a Dark Age”, attended by  online participants from around the world. [June 30]

Physical Review D Editor’s Suggestion Award

The ECL article, Detecting Helium Reionization with Fast Radio Bursts by Eric Linder has been awarded Editor’s Suggestion status by Physical Review D. This recognition is granted to fewer than 1% of articles. The research analyzes how high redshift fast radio bursts (FRB) can be used to study cosmology and the helium reionization epoch.

NUTTelA-TAO searches for unique fast radio burst and soft gamma-ray repeater

ECL researchers Kanat Baigarin, Bruce Grossan, and Zhanat Maksut raced in the first week of May to use the special capabilities of the Nazarbayev University Transient Telescope at Assy-Turgen Astrophysial Observatory (NUTTelA-TAO) to search for light from an unexpected, unique galactic fast radio burst and soft gamma-ray repeater. Controlling the telescope remotely while under Covid-19 lockdown, they were able to put limits on any optical emission at wavelengths in between the radio and X-ray bursts.

News about NUTTelA-TAO on the national TV channel “1 tv Eurasia”

The journalist took an interview from ECL team members and made a video report about remote control of the NUTTelA-TAO telescope from the NU laboratory. The video report appeared on a daily morning program on the national TV channel. A copy of the program is available on youtube. The report starts from 10:52 and ends at 14:20.

Visit to National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing (China)

Postdoctoral Scholar Dr Bekdaulet Shukirgaliyev has visited National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing (China) for two weeks from October 28th to November 9 for collaborative works on the dynamics of active galactic nuclei with Prof Rainer Spurzem and Dr Peter Berczik. They have modified phi-GRAPE/GPU and nbody6++gpu codes in order to study star-disk interactions in AGN where the stellar mass spectrum and stellar evolution are considered. They are now planning to launch million-body simulations of AGN dynamical evolution.

At the same time, Dr Kanat Baigarin was visiting Beijing. He and Dr Shukirgaliyev had a meeting with Prof Spurzem about establishing a collaboration between their research groups. Prof Spurzem is the spokesperson of NAOC about the Gravitational Wave Astronomy. Dr Baigarin proposed to host the Korea-China-Kazakhstan meeting on stellar dynamics and gravitational wave astronomy in ECL in 2020.

11th Korea-China-Kazakhstan (KCK) Meeting on Stellar Dynamics and Gravitational Wave Astronomy has been held in Korea Astronomy and Space Institute (Daejeon, South Korea) on Dec 12-13.

Postdoctoral Scholar Bekdaulet Shukirgaliyev participated in this meeting from ECL. He presented his work entitled “The life of bound clusters from the formation till dissolution” in this meeting. Dr Jongsuk Hong a Postdoctoral Researcher at Astronomy Department of Yonsei University was very interested in future collaboration with Bekdaulet Shukirgaliyev on the topic of star cluster formation and evolution. Next 12th KCK-meeting is going to be held at ECL (Nazarbayev University), preliminarily in October 2020.

The team of the NU Energetic Cosmos Laboratory completed the second phase of the NUTTelA-TAO project on the remote control of the star observation telescope

The team of the NU Energetic Cosmos Laboratory completed the second phase of the NUTTelA-TAO project on the remote control of the star observation telescope. To control the observatory, including telescope, dome, cameras, and other processes in real-time is now available directly from the university laboratory, 1000 km away from the observatory.

In the future, the telescope will operate autonomously: observe and instantly respond to emerging gamma-ray bursts, which in turn will create opportunities for new discoveries in the study of this amazing natural phenomenon. 

Successful test of full telescope system and BSTI instrument with 3 EMCCDs cameras on October 26-30. 

Team of NUTTellA-TAO project successfully finished testing telescope system control in robotic mode with 3 EMCCD cameras placed on BSTI instrument. The next steps will be conducting several tests with a fully autonomous telescope system without human interaction.

NUTTellA-TAO project presentation at International Robotic Telescope conference in Malaga, Spain

ECL member had participated in the Sixth Workshop on Robotic Autonomous Observations, which took place in Torremolinos, Malaga from 30th September till 4th October. He presented NUTTellA-TAO project in front of the international scientific community during the Transient detection session. It was a good opportunity to show our results, and learn more from engineers and scientists from all over the world.

Publication of NUTellA-TAO experimental paper

ECL members and collaborators explain the science case for NUTTellA-TAO (NU Transient Telescope at Assy-Turgen Astrophysical Observatory) and BSTI (Burst Simultaneous Three-Channel Imager) project to measure the shape of the gamma-ray burst optical spectrum  (Accepted, JHEA, 2019 August 15, http://arxiv.org/abs/1909.02152

Successful BSTI test

We have just completed preliminary assemble and testing of the BSTI (Burst Simultaneous Three-Channel Imager), a new instrument for understanding the astrophysics of cosmic gamma ray bursts (GRBs). For the first time ever the BSTI will allow us to measure the spectrum of optical emission from GRBs, the universe’s most powerful cosmic explosions.

The BSTI was designed and fabricated as a collaboration between the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory (ECL) and the Machine Shop at Nazarbayev University.

Successful telescope operation

2019 June 27 and July 28:

The ECL NUTTelA-TAO telescope already contributing to science.  In Gamma Coordinates Network (Astronomer’s Formal Rapid Communication) circular no.  24900, “GRB 190627A: NUTTelA-TAO optical counterpart observations”, our collaborators Alexi Pozanenko (IKI) and Maxim Krugov (Fesenkov Institute of Almaty), reported on measurements with our telescope of the afterglow of gamma-ray burst 190627A.

Also, in GCN 25212, “LIGO/Virgo S190728q: ZTF19abjethn TShAO and NUTTelA-TAO optical observations / classification”, activities in the search for gravitational wave counterparts was reported.

Low Temperature Detectors (LTD)19

Dr Shafiee presented his work with title of “Design Optimization of 10K pixel optical Microwave Kinetic Inductance detectors” at Low Temperature Detectors conference which is held in Milan since June 21 to 27. This is one of the unique atmosphere which you can find all top scientist in this field from NIST, NASA, SRON and ESA they get together and discuss about future of low temperature detectors. In this conference there was much discussion about MKIDs vs. TES sensors, and MKIDs appear to have even better performance and are the leading candidate for future detectors at this time.

Baden Wurttemburg Post conference

Dr Shafiee also was selected as top 15 young scientist among 600 young scientists of Lindau Nobel laureate event to join Baden-wurttemburg program since  July 6 to July 12. He visited Top universities and research programs in this state of Germany and presented his work. He visited Konstanz university, Friedberg university, Tubingen university, Stuttgart university, KIT and Max Planck research programs about solid state, Cosmology, astrophysics, cold atom and quantum technologies. He visited projects such as Katrin for neutrino mass measurement and collaborators of VICE project for measuring dark matter.

Lindau Nobel Symposium,

Our own Dr. Mehdi Shafiee, postdoc for the cryogenic research program, was selected for the great honor of going to Lindau-Germany for the Noble Laureate Lindau Symposium since June 29 to July 6. He attended a number of talks by Nobel Prize Winners, and select events for young researchers.  Mehdi, we hope you can use this advice to get a Nobel Prize of our own!

A new CNC machine has been arrived to ECL

ECL has established its own machine shop including powerful and precise three degrees of freedom CNC machine PCNC 440 for making precise detector boxes and Telescope flanges. It has stroke length of 10 inch in each directions and maximum feed rate of 3.5 m/min.

ECL team visited Trinity College and Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS)

Dr Baigarin and Dr Shafiee visited Trinity college and DIAS in order to collaborate on MKIDs projects at future. On This trip Dr Shafiee presented the recent activities and results of ECL among Trinity and DIAS scientists on May 12.

Dr Bruce Grossan is chosen as the Best researcher of the year 2019 in Kazakhstan

Dr Bruce Grossan as distinguished scientist from Berkeley space center and also experimental leader of ECL due to his activities on Gamma Ray Burst and leading the group to install the most fast transient telescope in Kazakhstan got medal as the best researcher of the year 2019.

WOLTE 13 2018, Sorrento, Italy

Dr Mehdi Shafiee with his team Marzhan Nekbalanova and Zhaksylyk kazykenov presented results of developing Microwave Kinetics Inductance detectors with the papers title of “Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors”, “Electronic Readout System for Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors” and “Noise Studying of Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors” at 13th Workshop on Low Temperature Electronics, WOLTE-13, September 10 – 13, 2018 in Sorrento, Italy.