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The ASIM instrument aboard the International Space Station was the only instrument out of seven which detected the giant flare and recorded the main burst phase without being blinded by the giant flash of high energy which saturated the other six detectors at the time of the maximum emission. After a very long journey through space, a burst of high-energy radiation was detected by the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on April 15, 2020. The origin of this energetic burst was found to be a giant flare from an extremely magnetized neutron star known as a magnetar, located more than 10 million light years away in the galaxy NGC 253.
The Atmosphere–Space Interactions Monitor, or ASIM for short, is a first-of-its-kind complement of instruments on the International Space Station. Dubbed the ‘space storm hunter’, ASIM measures electric events in Earth’s upper atmosphere with cameras, photometers and X- and gamma-ray detectors. Recently, ASIM unexpectedly detected a unique gamma-ray burst from outer space. This fortuitous observation was published in Nature magazine, less than a year after ASIM made a cover story.
The American Geophysical Union journal EOS (Earth and Space Science) News has chosen an ASIM paper by Østgaard et al. as a research spotlight for June 2021. The spotlight focusses on the ASIM work that demonstrates how TGFs are triggered by lightning leaders: "In a coordinated monitoring effort, scientists have uncovered the timing and triggering of high-energy lightning events in the sky."
Artikel på videnskab.dk s forskningsside, Forskerzonen, om ASIM missionen: Gå i Andreas Mogensens fodspor på jagt efter mystiske kæmpelyn
ESA web article on ASIM's link to climate change research
NASA has made a short video about how LIS and ASIM on the ISS work together to study lightning above and below the clouds
Les années lumière avec Sophie-Andrée Blondin: Radio segment from Radio Canada about ASIM, ELVEs and other TLEs. Part of their series 'Light Years' with Sophie-Andrée Blondin. In French.
'Why Danish research sweeps the front pages': A quick video in Danmarks Radio's 'Explainer' series. This video explains why ASIM's findings about TGFs and Blue Jets are so important and ground-breaking.
BBC Newsround story about the blue jets seen by ASIM