Instrumentation and satellite development
GRBAlpha, the first Hungarian satellite aiming to perform astrophysical observations, was launched in the spring of 2021. The detector systems, along with further subsystems of this satellite have been built and developed in our Institute, led by our group. This satellite has been performing observations for almost 2 years and successfully detected several dozens of gamma-ray bursts. In addition, our group participates in other space-borne experiments (VZLUSAT-2, GRBBeta, MRC-100), especially in hardware- and software developments, also for platform-side components as well. Moreover, our group provides back-end subsystems and automation-related implementations for the telescopes and satellite receiver networks at Piszkéstető Observatory - including the design and building of novel types of astronomical instrumentation, such as the Fly's Eye camera system.
The webpage of the GRBAlpha satellite can be found here.
Important result
GRB 221009A: the most prominent recent gamma-ray burst
The long gamma-ray burst, detected recently on October 9, 2022 has been one of the most important and the most well-observed energetic gamma-ray burst in the history of astronomy. Although GRBAlpha is a small satellite, the way much smallest in its instrument class, equipped with a comparatively small detector, events like GRB 221009A show the importance of the latter. Namely, the measurements provided by GRBAlpha are the sole series of data which were not saturated its own detector, therefore an accurate absolute gamma flux measurement could be provided via our satellite.
