On Friday 13 December 2019, the Dean of Science at UCT, Prof Maano Ramutsindela, formally opened the second optical teaching telescope. This is a new 14-inch Celestron telescope dedicated towards optical spectroscopy. The Tony Fairall Teaching Observatory of the Department of Astronomy at UCT now consists of two 14-in Celestron optical teaching telescopes, and one 3-m radio teaching telescope. The latter is housed at the SAAO.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos. These explosive events last several seconds and during that time they emit the same amount of gamma-rays as all the stars in the universe combined. Such extreme amounts of energy can only be released during catastrophic events like the death of a very massive star, or the merging of two compact stars, and are accompanied by an afterglow of light over a broad range of wavelengths (or equivalently energies), that fades with time.