Swift Multitool Infographic

This infographic highlights some of the achievements of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has become the agency’s astrophysics multitool since launching in 2004. The spacecraft studies a wide range of objects, from those near Earth, to stars, black holes, and gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the cosmos.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Alt text: Infographic of some of Swift’s science highlights

Image description: This infographic highlighting NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is done mostly in shades of blue except for pops of green, purple, brown and orange. A line of icon-style images, sort of like a film strip, bisects the image. The icons get smaller the further away they are, giving the sense of distance. Furthest to the left is a green Earth and a brown asteroid. Then there is a white comet, an orange star, a blue-and-white neutron star, a purple-and-black black hole, a blue-and-white spiral galaxy, a reddish nebula, and a purple gamma-ray burst.

At top left, text reads “Astrophysics Multitool” and “NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.” Below that is a box labeled “Original Objectives,” with text reading “To discover and quickly localize GRBs (gamma-ray bursts) and observe their afterglows in visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light.” The GRB text is purple, and the rest is blue. Below the box, text reads “Since launching on Nov. 20, 2004, Swift has …”

To the right of the film strip are four boxes. The top box is labeled “GRBs” in purple. There are five lines of text below it reading “Detected thousands of GRBs / Discovered the farthest GRB / Pinpointed the afterglows of short GRBs / Helped monitor the brightest GRB ever seen / Assisted in tying short GRBs to neutron star mergers.”

The next box down and a little to the left is labeled “Stars” in orange text on a brown background. Five lines of text below it read “Spotted megaflares from red dwarf stars / Monitored the clashing winds of giant binary stars / Caught enormous star quakes on distant magnetars / Discovered a supernova remnant / Surveyed star formation in the nearest galaxies.”

The next box down and a little more to the left is labeled “Earth” in green. The five lines of text below it read “Measured water released by comets / Analyzed an asteroid collision / Caught a comet slowing its spin / Tracked a near-Earth asteroid / Studied a Sun-grazing comet.”

The last box at bottom right is labeled “Black Holes” in blue. Five lines of text below it read “Discovered new black holes / Observed monster black holes destroying stars / Used X-ray echoes to map gas around a black hole / Showed that galaxy collisions fuel their central black holes / Found a black hole repeatedly nibbling on a star.”