The figure on the left is an HST observation of GRB970228; on the right, the logo of the 3rd Interplanetary Network.
Acknowledging and Referencing the Website
Kevin Hurley’s Scanned
Binders
The third
interplanetary network (IPN3) is a group of spacecraft
equipped with gamma-ray
burst detectors. By timing the arrival of a burst at several spacecraft,
its precise location can be found. The farther apart the detectors, the more
precise the location. The principle is illustrated in the figure below. Each
pair of spacecraft, like S1 and S2, gives an annulus
of possible arrival directions whose center is defined by the vector joining
the two spacecraft, and whose radius theta depends on the difference in the
arrival times divided by the distance between the two spacecraft.
IPN3 began operations in 1990, with the launch of the Ulysses spacecraft, which carried the GRB experiment. Today, the main spacecraft contributing their data are WIND, 2001 Mars Odyssey, INTEGRAL, Swift, Fermi, and BepiColombo. When the duty cycles and effective fields of view of all the missions in the network are considered, the IPN is a full-time, isotropic all-sky GRB monitor. The flux and fluence efficiencies of the IPN are plotted here. So far, 32 spacecraft have participated in the network.
A few selected IPN-related publications.
All refereed IPN-related publications through 2019.