That energy swept over the Earth just before sunrise on December 3. The gamma rays from the beams were detected by the Swift satellite, which promptly determined the burst’s position and sent the coordinates to Earth. Sent out via the Internet (srsly), telescopes across the planet responded to the call, and in northern California GORT swung its eye to the position of the gamma-ray burst. Within minutes of Swift’s detection of the burst, GORT began taking its images. The picture above was from just 7 minutes after Swift triggered.
To recap, a satellite detected gamma rays and sent a "hey, check this out" email to a bunch of photo-telescopes around the world, and 7 minutes later they captured the image. With no human intervention.
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