Big Flare

  • Released Tuesday, July 21, 2015
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NASA's Fermi satellite sees record flare from a black hole in a galaxy 5 billion light-years away.

NASA's Fermi satellite sees record flare from a black hole in a galaxy 5 billion light-years away.

3C 279 is a famous blazar, a galaxy whose high-energy activity is powered by a central supermassive black hole weighing up to a billion times the sun's mass and roughly the size of our planetary system. As matter falls toward the black hole, some particles race away at nearly the speed of light along a pair of jets pointed in opposite directions. Five billion years ago, a great disturbance rocked a region near the monster black hole at the center of the galaxy. On June 14, 2015, the pulse of high-energy light produced by this event finally arrived at Earth, setting off detectors aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The satellite scans the sky for gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Between June 14 and 17, it observed a shower of gamma rays streaming from 3C 279. According to scientists, the flare was the most dynamic the satellite has ever seen. Watch the video to see a visualization of the gamma rays detected by Fermi.

Gamma rays are represented as circles in this video. Energy is indicated by a circle's max size and its color, with white lowest and magenta highest.

This image shows the high-energy light from galaxy 3C 279 observed by Fermi between June 14 and 17, 2015.

This image shows the high-energy light from galaxy 3C 279 observed by Fermi between June 14 and 17, 2015.

This image shows how the gamma-ray sky looked before the galaxy's flare event (left) and during (right).

This image shows how the gamma-ray sky looked before the galaxy's flare event (left) and during (right).

NASA's Fermi satellite orbits 350 miles above Earth, searching the sky for gamma rays.

NASA's Fermi satellite orbits 350 miles above Earth, searching the sky for gamma rays.

For More Information

See NASA.gov

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Blazar video and images courtesy of NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration
Fermi satellite image courtesy of NASA/GFSC

This page was originally published on Tuesday, July 21, 2015.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:49 PM EDT.