NASA's Swift is finished: what amateur transient-chasers lose, and what's left
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory made its last observation on 20 October 2026, and the agency announced the end of the science mission on the 23rd. The spacecraft had dropped below 275 km, where atmospheric drag stops its telescopes from holding steady on a target. As of 27 October its orbit was 249 × 254 km (Heavens-Above), and NASA expects re-entry “in the next few weeks.” You were never going to see Swift itself from Europe, and I’ll show why below. What amateurs lose is less visible: the satellite that, for 22 years, turned a gamma-ray flash into an arcminute-sized box on the sky fast enough for a backyard telescope to point at it. Here’s what Swift did for the hobby, who issues the alerts now, and what a small telescope can still contribute. ...