Fermi Satellite Celebrates 10 Years of Discoveries

  • Released Monday, June 11, 2018
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Watch a two-minute video on how NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the high-energy sky over its first 10 years in space.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Music: "Unseen Husband" from Killer Tracks

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

Complete transcript available.

On June 11, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope celebrates a decade of using gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light in the cosmos, to study black holes, neutron stars, and other extreme cosmic objects and events.

Fermi’s main instrument, the Large Area Telescope (LAT), has observed more than 5,000 individual gamma-ray sources.

In 1949, Enrico Fermi — an Italian-American pioneer in high-energy physics and Nobel laureate for whom the mission was named — suggested that cosmic rays, particles traveling at nearly the speed of light, could be propelled by supernova shock waves. In 2013, Fermi’s LAT used gamma rays to prove these stellar remnants are at least one source of the speedy particles.

Fermi’s all-sky map, produced by the LAT, has revealed two massive structures extending above and below the plane of the Milky Way. These two “bubbles” span 50,000 light-years and were probably produced by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy only a few million years ago.

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), Fermi’s secondary instrument, can see the entire sky at any instant, except the portion blocked by Earth. The satellite has observed over 2,300 gamma-ray bursts, the most luminous events in the universe. Gamma-ray bursts occur when massive stars collapse or neutron stars or black holes merge and drive jets of particles at nearly the speed of light. In those jets, matter travels at different speeds and collides, emitting gamma rays.

On Aug. 17, 2017, Fermi detected a gamma-ray burst from a powerful explosion in the constellation Hydra. At almost the same time, the National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory detected ripples in space-time from the same event, the merger of two neutron stars. This was the first time light and gravitational waves were detected from the same source. Scientists also used another gamma-ray burst detected by Fermi to confirm Einstein’s theory that space-time is smooth and continuous.

Watch a five-minute video on how NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the high-energy sky over it's first 10 years in space.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Music: "Unseen Husband" from Killer Tracks

Complete transcript available.

This illustration shows the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has now been studying the extreme universe for a decade.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab

This illustration shows the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has now been studying the extreme universe for a decade.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab

This view of the gamma-ray sky was created with data taken over nine years by the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which operated from 1991 to 2000. Credit: NASA/EGRET Team

This view of the gamma-ray sky was created with data taken over nine years by the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which operated from 1991 to 2000.

Credit: NASA/EGRET Team

This sharper, more detailed all-sky map was produced by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope using nine years of data collected from 2008 to 2017.Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

This sharper, more detailed all-sky map was produced by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope using nine years of data collected from 2008 to 2017.

Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

This poster celebrates the first decade of science from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The central image is the best portrait of the gamma-ray sky to date — a map of the whole sky at gamma-ray wavelengths accumulated over 10 years of operations. The poster also discusses other Fermi findings, including a black widow pulsar, the Fermi Bubbles rising thousands of light-years out of our galaxy's center, a giant gamma-ray flare from the Crab Nebula, and many more. The poster is available in a variety of resolutions. Credit: NASA/Fermi/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet

This poster celebrates the first decade of science from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The central image is the best portrait of the gamma-ray sky to date — a map of the whole sky at gamma-ray wavelengths accumulated over 10 years of operations. The poster also discusses other Fermi findings, including a black widow pulsar, the Fermi Bubbles rising thousands of light-years out of our galaxy's center, a giant gamma-ray flare from the Crab Nebula, and many more. The poster is available in a variety of resolutions.

Credit: NASA/Fermi/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet

For More Information

See https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-fermi-satellite-celebrates-10-years-of-discoveries

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. However, individual items should be credited as indicated above.

This page was originally published on Monday, June 11, 2018.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:46 PM EDT.

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