{ "count": 71, "next": null, "previous": null, "results": [ { "id": 40405, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/fermi-videos/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2020-01-22T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi-Videos", "description": "Produced videos about Fermi and Fermi science results!", "hits": 148 }, { "id": 40409, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/fermi-stills/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2020-01-22T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi Stills", "description": "A collection of Fermi-related still images, illustrations, graphics and short clips.", "hits": 291 }, { "id": 40401, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/fermi-news/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2020-01-17T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi News Stories", "description": "Video, images and other media supporting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope news products.", "hits": 293 }, { "id": 12101, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12101/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2016-01-04T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi Hyperwall--2016 AAS Technical", "description": "Upresed 5760x3240 animation of the Fermi spacecraft.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab || frame-000020_print.jpg (1024x576) [147.2 KB] || Fermi_Beauty_EarthandStars_1080p.webm (1920x1080) [1.4 MB] || Fermi_Beauty_EarthandStars_1080p.mov (1920x1080) [25.4 MB] || FermiBeautyDraft (5760x3240) [0 Item(s)] || Fermi_Beauty_EarthandStars_4k.mov (4096x2304) [47.9 MB] || Fermi_Beauty_EarthandStars_4k_ProRes.mov (5760x3240) [808.7 MB] || ", "hits": 82 }, { "id": 40111, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/astro-star/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2015-09-18T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Astrophysics Star Listing", "description": "No description available.", "hits": 176 }, { "id": 40217, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/swift/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2014-11-18T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory", "description": "NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory provides astronomers with a unique tool for exploring many different classes of astronomical phenomena, from gamma-ray bursts and supernovae to spinning neutron stars, outbursts from black holes, and even exoplanets, comets and asteroids. These pages gather together media products associated with Swift news releases.For more information about the Swift mission, visit its NASA webpage.", "hits": 148 }, { "id": 11608, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11608/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2014-07-31T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi Reveals Novae as a New Class of Gamma-Ray Sources", "description": "Observations of four stellar eruptions, called novae, by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope firmly establish that these relatively common outbursts nearly always produce gamma rays, the most energetic form of light. A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star caused by a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a white dwarf, a compact star not much larger than Earth. Novae occur because a stream of gas flowing from the star continually piles up into a layer on the white dwarf's surface. This layer eventually reaches a flash point and detonates in a runaway thermonuclear explosion. Each nova releases up to 100,000 times the annual energy output of our sun. Prior to Fermi, no one suspected these outbursts were capable of producing high-energy gamma rays. Such emission, with energies millions of times greater than visible light, usually is associated with far more powerful cosmic blasts.Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) scored its first nova detection in March 2010 with an outburst of V407 Cygni. In this rare type of system, a white dwarf interacts with a red giant star more than a hundred times the size of our sun. Other members of this unusual stellar class have been observed to \"go nova\" every few decades.In 2012 and 2013, the LAT found three much more typical, or \"classical,\" novae: V339 Delphini in 2013 and V1324 Scorpii and V959 Monocerotis in 2012. The outbursts occurred in comparatively common systems where a white dwarf and a sun-like star orbit each other every few hours. Astronomers estimate that between 20 and 50 novae occur each year in our galaxy. Most go undetected, their visible light obscured by intervening dust and their gamma rays dimmed by distance. All of the gamma-ray novae found so far lie between 9,000 and 15,000 light-years away, which is relatively nearby compared to our galaxy's size.One explanation for the gamma-ray emission is that the blast creates multiple shock waves, which expand into space at slightly different speeds. Faster shocks could interact with slower ones, accelerating particles to near the speed of light. These particles ultimately could produce gamma rays. || ", "hits": 129 }, { "id": 11319, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11319/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2013-08-06T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Detecting Superfast Matter", "description": "Scientists always suspected supernova remnants could speed up cosmic rays, the streams of charged particles that exist throughout space. Now they have proof. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope caught two supernova remnants—IC 443 and W44—red-handed as they accelerated cosmic rays to near the speed of light. As cosmic rays travel through the Milky Way galaxy, magnetic fields scramble their paths. By the time the particles reach Earth, the tracks leading back to their source are so complex they’re completely untraceable. So scientists came up with an indirect method for identifying the origins of these particles: observing gamma-ray emissions created by the interaction of accelerated cosmic rays with clouds of interstellar gas. Watch the video to learn more. || ", "hits": 57 }, { "id": 40134, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/fermi5/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2013-08-05T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope", "description": "NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has completed its primary mission, and it will continue to explore the high-energy cosmos in unprecedented detail.\nThese pages gather together media products associated with Fermi news releases starting before its 2008 launch, when it was known as GLAST. \n\n\n\nFermi detects gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, with energies thousands to billions of times greater than the visible spectrum.\n\nThe mission has discovered pulsars, proved that supernova remnants can accelerate particles to near the speed of light, monitored eruptions of black holes in distant galaxies, and found giant bubbles linked to the central black hole in our own galaxy. \nFor more information about the Fermi mission, visit its NASA webpage.", "hits": 326 }, { "id": 40136, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/fermi-glastdays/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2013-08-05T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi--GLAST Days", "description": "No description available.", "hits": 3 }, { "id": 40139, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/fermi-nature-universe/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2013-08-05T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi: Nature of the Universe", "description": "Dark matter, the fabric of space-time, gravitational lensing. Fermi helps answer some of the big questions.", "hits": 52 }, { "id": 40141, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/fermi-animations/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2013-08-05T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi: Animations", "description": "No description available.", "hits": 78 }, { "id": 11261, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11261/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2013-05-03T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "NASA's Fermi, Swift See 'Shockingly Bright' Gamma-ray Burst", "description": "A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world. The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, and designated GRB 130427A, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.The GRB lasted so long that a record number of telescopes on the ground were able to catch it while space-based observations were still ongoing.Just after 3:47 a.m. EDT on Saturday, April 27, Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) triggered on an eruption of high-energy light in the constellation Leo. The burst occurred as NASA's Swift satellite was slewing between targets, which delayed its Burst Alert Telescope's detection by less than a minute. Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) recorded one gamma ray with an energy of at least 94 billion electron volts (GeV), or some 35 billion times the energy of visible light, and about three times greater than the LAT's previous record. The GeV emission from the burst lasted for hours, and it remained detectable by the LAT for the better part of a day, setting a new record for the longest gamma-ray emission from a GRB.The burst subsequently was detected in optical, infrared and radio wavelengths by ground-based observatories, based on the rapid accurate position from Swift. Astronomers quickly learned that the GRB was located about 3.6 billion light-years away, which for these events is relatively close.Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions. Astronomers think most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse under their own weight. As the core collapses into a black hole, jets of material shoot outward at nearly the speed of light. The jets bore all the way through the collapsing star and continue into space, where they interact with gas previously shed by the star and generate bright afterglows that fade with time. If the GRB is near enough, astronomers usually discover a supernova at the site a week or so after the outburst. This GRB is in the closest 5 percent of bursts, so ground-based observatories are monitoring its location in hopes of finding an underlying supernova. || ", "hits": 96 }, { "id": 11229, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11229/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2013-04-30T11:00:00-04:00", "title": "When Fermi Dodged a 1.5-ton Bullet", "description": "NASA scientists don't often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email on March 29, 2012, she found herself facing this precise situation. While Fermi is in fine shape today, continuing its mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe, the story of how it sidestepped a potential disaster offers a glimpse at an underappreciated aspect of managing a space mission: orbital traffic control. As McEnery worked through her inbox, an automatically generated report arrived from NASA's Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. On scanning the document, she discovered that Fermi was just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a dead Cold-War era spy satellite. The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet.Although the forecast indicated a close call, satellite operators have learned the hard way that they can't be too careful. The uncertainties in predicting spacecraft positions a week into the future can be much larger than the distances forecast for their closest approach. With a speed relative to Fermi of 27,000 mph, a direct hit by the 3,100-pound Cosmos 1805 would release as much energy as two and a half tons of high explosives, destroying both spacecraft. The update on Friday, March 30, indicated that the satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other. Fermi would have to move out of the way if the threat failed to recede. Because Fermi's thrusters were designed to de-orbit the satellite at the end of its mission, they had never before been used or tested, adding a new source of anxiety for the team.By Tuesday, April 3, the close approach was certain, and all plans were in place for firing Fermi's thrusters. The maneuver was performed by the spacecraft based on previously developed procedures. Fermi fired all thrusters for one second and was back doing science within the hour.Watch this video on YouTube. || ", "hits": 58 }, { "id": 11205, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11205/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2013-02-27T10:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi Traces a Celestial Spirograph", "description": "NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits our planet every 95 minutes, building up increasingly deeper views of the universe with every circuit. Its wide-eyed Large Area Telescope (LAT) sweeps across the entire sky every three hours, capturing the highest-energy form of light — gamma rays — from sources across the universe. These range from supermassive black holes billions of light-years away to intriguing objects in our own galaxy, such as X-ray binaries, supernova remnants and pulsars. Now a Fermi scientist has transformed LAT data of a famous pulsar into a mesmerizing movie that visually encapsulates the spacecraft's complex motion. Pulsars are neutron stars, the crushed cores of massive suns that destroyed themselves when they ran out of fuel, collapsed and exploded. The blast simultaneously shattered the star and compressed its core into a body as small as a city yet more massive than the sun. One pulsar, called Vela, shines especially bright for Fermi. It spins 11 times a second and is the brightest persistent source of gamma rays the LAT sees. The movie renders Vela's position in a fisheye perspective, where the middle of the pattern corresponds to the central and most sensitive portion of the LAT's field of view. The edge of the pattern is 90 degrees away from the center and well beyond what scientists regard as the effective limit of the LAT's vision. The movie tracks both Vela's position relative to the center of the LAT's field of view and the instrument's exposure of the pulsar during the first 51 months of Fermi's mission, from Aug. 4, 2008, to Nov. 15, 2012. The pattern Vela traces reflects numerous motions of the spacecraft. The first is Fermi's 95-minute orbit around Earth, but there's another, subtler motion related to it. The orbit itself also rotates, a phenomenon called precession. Similar to the wobble of an unsteady top, Fermi's orbital plane makes a slow circuit around Earth every 54 days. In order to capture the entire sky every two orbits, scientists deliberately nod the LAT in a repeating pattern from one orbit to the next. It first looks north on one orbit, south on the next, and then north again. Every few weeks, the LAT deviates from this pattern to concentrate on particularly interesting targets, such as eruptions on the sun, brief but brilliant gamma-ray bursts associated with the birth of stellar-mass black holes, and outbursts from supermassive black holes in distant galaxies. The Vela movie captures one other Fermi motion. The spacecraft rolls to keep the sun from shining on and warming up the LAT's radiators, which regulate its temperature by bleeding excess heat into space.Watch this video on YouTube. || ", "hits": 41 }, { "id": 11209, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11209/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2013-02-14T14:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi Proves Supernova Remnants Produce Cosmic Rays", "description": "A new study using observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the first clear-cut evidence that the expanding debris of exploded stars produces some of the fastest-moving matter in the universe. This discovery is a major step toward meeting one of Fermi's primary mission goals.Cosmic rays are subatomic particles that move through space at nearly the speed of light. About 90 percent of them are protons, with the remainder consisting of electrons and atomic nuclei. In their journey across the galaxy, the electrically charged particles become deflected by magnetic fields. This scrambles their paths and makes it impossible to trace their origins directly.Through a variety of mechanisms, these speedy particles can lead to the emission of gamma rays, the most powerful form of light and a signal that travels to us directly from its sources.Two supernova remnants, known as IC 443 and W44, are expanding into cold, dense clouds of interstellar gas. This material emits gamma rays when struck by high-speed particles escaping the remnants.Scientists have been unable to ascertain which particle is responsible for this emission because cosmic-ray protons and electrons give rise to gamma rays with similar energies. Now, after analyzing four years of data, Fermi scientists see a gamma-ray feature from both remnants that, like a fingerprint, proves the culprits are protons.When cosmic-ray protons smash into normal protons, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion. The pion quickly decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission falls within a specific band of energies associated with the rest mass of the neutral pion, and it declines steeply toward lower energies. Detecting this low-end cutoff is clear proof that the gamma rays arise from decaying pions formed by protons accelerated within the supernova remnants.In 1949, the Fermi telescope's namesake, physicist Enrico Fermi, suggested that the highest-energy cosmic rays were accelerated in the magnetic fields of interstellar gas clouds. In the decades that followed, astronomers showed that supernova remnants were the galaxy's best candidate sites for this process.?A charged particle trapped in a supernova remnant's magnetic field moves randomly throughout it and occasionally crosses through the explosion's leading shock wave. Each round trip through the shock ramps up the particle's speed by about 1 percent. After many crossings, the particle obtains enough energy to break free and escapes into the galaxy as a newborn cosmic ray. The Fermi discovery builds on a strong hint of neutral pion decay in W44 observed by the Italian Space Agency's AGILE gamma-ray observatory and published in late 2011.Watch this video on YouTube. || ", "hits": 255 }, { "id": 11131, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11131/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-12-06T10:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi Improves Its Vision For Thunderstorm Gamma-ray Flashes", "description": "Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above thunderstorms. The outbursts, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), last only a few thousandths of a second, but their gamma rays rank among the highest-energy light that naturally occurs on Earth. The enhanced GBM discovery rate helped scientists show most TGFs also generate a strong burst of radio waves, a finding that will change how scientists study this poorly understood phenomenon.Lightning emits a broad range of very low frequency (VLF) radio waves, often heard as pop-and-crackle static when listening to AM radio. The World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), a research collaboration operated by the University of Washington in Seattle, routinely detects these radio signals and uses them to pinpoint the location of lightning discharges anywhere on the globe to within about 12 miles (20 km).Scientists have known for a long time TGFs were linked to strong VLF bursts, but they interpreted these signals as originating from lightning strokes somehow associated with the gamma-ray emission.\"Instead, we've found when a strong radio burst occurs almost simultaneously with a TGF, the radio emission is coming from the TGF itself,\" said co-author Michael Briggs, a member of the GBM team. The researchers identified much weaker radio bursts that occur up to several thousandths of a second before or after a TGF. They interpret these signals as intracloud lightning strokes related to, but not created by, the gamma-ray flash. Scientists suspect TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under certain conditions, the field becomes strong enough that it drives a high-speed upward avalanche of electrons, which give off gamma rays when they are deflected by air molecules. \"What's new here is that the same electron avalanche likely responsible for the gamma-ray emission also produces the VLF radio bursts, and this gives us a new window into understanding this phenomenon,\" said Joseph Dwyer, a physics professor at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla., and a member of the study team. Because the WWLLN radio positions are far more precise than those based on Fermi's orbit, scientists will develop a much clearer picture of where TGFs occur and perhaps which types of thunderstorms tend to produce them.Watch this video on YouTube. || ", "hits": 71 }, { "id": 11117, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11117/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-11-01T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "NASA's Fermi Explores the Early Universe", "description": "Astronomers using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have made the most accurate measurement of starlight in the universe and used it to establish the total amount of light from all of the stars that have ever shone, accomplishing a primary mission goal.Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light. Since Fermi's launch in 2008, its Large Area Telescope (LAT) observes the entire sky in high-energy gamma rays every three hours, creating the most detailed map of the universe ever known at these energies. The total sum of starlight in the cosmos is known to astronomers as the extragalactic background light (EBL). To gamma rays, the EBL functions as a kind of cosmic fog. Ajello and his team investigated the EBL by studying gamma rays from 150 blazars, or galaxies powered by black holes, that were strongly detected at energies greater than 3 billion electron volts (GeV), or more than a billion times the energy of visible light. As matter falls toward a galaxy's supermassive black hole, some of it is accelerated outward at almost the speed of light in jets pointed in opposite directions. When one of the jets happens to be aimed in the direction of Earth, the galaxy appears especially bright and is classified as a blazar.Gamma rays produced in blazar jets travel across billions of light-years to Earth. During their journey, the gamma rays pass through an increasing fog of visible and ultraviolet light emitted by stars that formed throughout the history of the universe. Occasionally, a gamma ray collides with starlight and transforms into a pair of particles — an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Once this occurs, the gamma ray light is lost. In effect, the process dampens the gamma-ray signal in much the same way as fog dims a distant lighthouse. From studies of nearby blazars, scientists have determined how many gamma rays should be emitted at different energies. More distant blazars show fewer gamma rays at higher energies — especially above 25 GeV — thanks to absorption by the cosmic fog. The farthest blazars are missing most of their higher-energy gamma rays.The researchers then determined the average gamma-ray attenuation across three distance ranges between 9.6 billion years ago and today. From this measurement, the scientists were able to estimate the fog's thickness. To account for the observations, the average stellar density in the cosmos is about 1.4 stars per 100 billion cubic light-years. To put this in another way, the average distance between stars in the universe is about 4,150 light-years.See the media briefing page here. || ", "hits": 124 }, { "id": 11000, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11000/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-06-11T13:00:00-04:00", "title": "NASA's Fermi Detects the Highest-Energy Light from a Solar Flare", "description": "During a powerful solar blast in March, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun. The discovery heralds Fermi's new role as a solar observatory, a powerful new tool for understanding solar outbursts during the sun's maximum period of activity.\"For most of Fermi's four years in orbit, its Large Area Telescope (LAT) saw the sun as a faint, steady gamma-ray source thanks to the impacts of high-speed particles called cosmic rays,\" said Nicola Omodei, an astrophysicist at Stanford University in California. \"Now we're beginning to see what the sun itself can do.\"A solar flare is an explosive blast of light and charged particles. The powerful March 7 flare, which earned a classification of X5.4 based on the peak intensity of its X-rays, is the strongest eruption so far observed by Fermi's LAT. The flare produced such an outpouring of gamma rays — a form of light with even greater energy than X-rays — that the sun briefly became the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky.At the flare's peak, the LAT detected gamma rays with two billion times the energy of visible light, or about 4 billion electron volts (GeV), easily setting a record for the highest-energy light ever detected during or just after a solar flare. The flux of high-energy gamma rays, defined as those with energies beyond 100 million electron volts (MeV), was 1,000 times greater than the sun's steady output. The March 7 flare also is notable for the persistence of its gamma-ray emission. Fermi's LAT detected high-energy gamma rays for about 20 hours, two and a half times longer than any event on record. Additionally, the event marks the first time a greater-than-100-MeV gamma-ray source has been localized to the sun's disk, thanks to the LAT's keen angular resolution. Flares and other eruptive solar events produce gamma rays by accelerating charged particles, which then collide with matter in the sun's atmosphere and visible surface. For instance, interactions among protons result in short-lived subatomic particles called pions, which produce high-energy gamma rays when they decay. Nuclei excited by collisions with lower-energy ions give off characteristic gamma rays as they settle down. Accelerated electrons emit gamma rays as they collide with protons and atomic nuclei.Solar eruptions are now on the rise as the sun progresses toward the peak of its roughly 11-year-long activity cycle, now expected in mid-2013. || ", "hits": 87 }, { "id": 10943, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10943/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-04-02T12:30:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi Observations of Dwarf Galaxies Provide New Insights on Dark Matter", "description": "There's more to the cosmos than meets the eye. About 80 percent of the matter in the universe is invisible to telescopes, yet its gravitational influence is manifest in the orbital speeds of stars around galaxies and in the motions of clusters of galaxies. Yet, despite decades of effort, no one knows what this \"dark matter\" really is. Many scientists think it's likely that the mystery will be solved with the discovery of new kinds of subatomic particles, types necessarily different from those composing atoms of the ordinary matter all around us. The search to detect and identify these particles is underway in experiments both around the globe and above it. Scientists working with data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have looked for signals from some of these hypothetical particles by zeroing in on 10 small, faint galaxies that orbit our own. Although no signals have been detected, a novel analysis technique applied to two years of data from the observatory's Large Area Telescope (LAT) has essentially eliminated these particle candidates for the first time.WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, represent a favored class of dark matter candidates. Some WIMPs may mutually annihilate when pairs of them interact, a process expected to produce gamma rays — the most energetic form of light — that the LAT is designed to detect. The team examined two years of LAT-detected gamma rays with energies in the range from 200 million to 100 billion electron volts (GeV) from 10 of the roughly two dozen dwarf galaxies known to orbit the Milky Way. Instead of analyzing the results for each galaxy separately, the scientists developed a statistical technique — they call it a \"joint likelihood analysis\" — that evaluates all of the galaxies at once without merging the data together. No gamma-ray signal consistent with the annihilations expected from four different types of commonly considered WIMP particles was found.For the first time, the results show that WIMP candidates within a specific range of masses and interaction rates cannot be dark matter. A paper detailing these results appeared in the Dec. 9, 2011, issue of Physical Review Letters. || ", "hits": 168 }, { "id": 10955, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10955/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-03-30T15:00:00-04:00", "title": "WIMPs—Weakly Interacting Massive Particles", "description": "Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs, represent one hypothesized class of particles to explain dark matter.They neither absorb nor emit light and don't interact strongly with other particles. But when they encounter each other, they annihilate and make gamma rays. || ", "hits": 545 }, { "id": 10918, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10918/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-03-01T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Galactic Lobes", "description": "Scientists have discovered gigantic structures 25,000 light-years tall ballooning above and below the Milky Way. Within each curved lobe, extremely energetic electrons of unknown origin interact with lower-energy light to generate the gamma rays that define these bubbles. The galactic-scale structures could be remnants from a burst of star formation or leftovers from an eruption by the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center. Scientists aren't sure yet, but the more they learn about this amazing structure, which may be only a few million years old, the better we'll understand the Milky Way. While not immediately visible to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, these unexpected features were brought into sharp relief by a group of scientists who processed data from Fermi's all-sky map. The visualization below shows how artists imagine the lobes would appear if gamma rays were visible to the naked eye. || ", "hits": 149 }, { "id": 20122, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20122/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2012-02-25T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi's LAT Instrument", "description": "Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) detects particles produced in a physical process known as pair production that epitomizes Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2. When a gamma ray, which is pure energy (E), slams into a layer of tungsten in one of the tracking towers that compose the LAT, it creates mass (m) in the form of a pair of subatomic particles, an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Several layers of high-precision silicon detectors track the particles as they move through the instrument. The direction of the incoming gamma ray is determined by projecting the particle paths backward. The particles travel through the trackers until they reach a separate detector called a calorimeter, which absorbs and measures their energies. The LAT produces gamma-ray images of astronomical objects, while also determining the energy of each detected gamma ray. || ", "hits": 85 }, { "id": 10900, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10900/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-01-31T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Antimatter Explosions", "description": "Thunderstorms produce more than just lightning. As these powerful storms roll over Earth, their electric fields can eject a burst of gamma rays known as a terrestrial gamma-ray flash. And now scientists have discovered that these flashes also create the asymmetrical opposite of matter—antimatter. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, in outer space. But it also observes these flashes from thunderstorms. In 2009, Fermi detected gamma rays from a thunderstorm that was located well beyond the horizon from where it could directly observe the storm. So where did the rays come from? When antimatter collides with matter, the particles annihilate and emit gamma rays. This means the gamma rays detected by Fermi could only have come from an antimatter collision with the spacecraft itself, providing the first-ever clue that these Earth-bound storms can send antimatter into space. In the videos below, see a map of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes detected by Fermi and a breakdown of how this explosive, mysterious process unfolds. || ", "hits": 813 }, { "id": 10878, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10878/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-11-28T14:00:00-05:00", "title": "Gamma rays in the Heart of Cygnus", "description": "Located in the vicinity of the second-magnitude star Gamma Cygni, the Cygnus X star-forming region was discovered as a diffuse radio source by surveys in the 1950s. Now, a study using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope finds that the tumult of star birth and death in Cygnus X has managed to corral fast-moving particles called cosmic rays.Cosmic rays are subatomic particles — mainly protons — that move through space at nearly the speed of light. In their journey across the galaxy, the particles are deflected by magnetic fields, which scramble their paths and make it impossible to backtrack the particles to their sources. Yet when cosmic rays collide with interstellar gas, they produce gamma rays — the most energetic and penetrating form of light — that travel to us straight from the source.The Cygnus X star factory is located about 4,500 light-years away and is believed to contain enough raw material to make two million stars like our sun. Within it are many young star clusters and several sprawling groups of related O- and B-type stars, called OB associations. One, called Cygnus OB2, contains 65 O stars — the most massive, luminous and hottest type — and nearly 500 B stars. These massive stars possess intense outflows that clear out cavities in the region's gas clouds. A tangled web of shockwaves associated with this process impedes the movement of cosmic rays throughout the region. Cosmic rays striking gas nuclei or photons from starlight produce the gamma rays Fermi detects.The release on NASA.gov is here. || ", "hits": 39 }, { "id": 10858, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10858/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-11-03T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi Discovers Youngest Millisecond Pulsar", "description": "An international team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these objects form. At the same time, another team has exploited improved analytical techniques to locate nine new gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi data.A pulsar, also called a neutron star, is the closest thing to a black hole astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. This matter is so compressed that even a teaspoonful weighs as much as Mount Everest.Typically, millisecond pulsars are a billion years or more old, ages commensurate with a stellar lifetime. But in the Nov. 3 issue of Science, the Fermi team reveals a bright, energetic millisecond pulsar only 25 million years old.The object, named PSR J1823—3021A, lies within NGC 6624, a spherical assemblage of ancient stars called a globular cluster, one of about 160 similar objects that orbit our galaxy. The cluster is about 10 billion years old and lies about 27,000 light-years away toward the constellation Sagittarius.\"With this new batch of pulsars, Fermi now has detected more than 100, which is an exciting milestone when you consider that before Fermi's launch only seven of them were known to emit gamma rays,\" said Pablo Saz Parkinson, an astrophysicist at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California Santa Cruz. || ", "hits": 157 }, { "id": 10819, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10819/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-09-09T09:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi's Latest Gamma-ray Census Highlights Cosmic Mysteries", "description": "Every three hours, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope scans the entire sky and deepens its portrait of the high-energy universe. Every year, the satellite's scientists reanalyze all of the data it has collected, exploiting updated analysis methods to tease out new sources. These relatively steady sources are in addition to the numerous transient events Fermi detects, such as gamma-ray bursts in the distant universe and flares from the sun.Earlier this year, the Fermi team released its second catalog of sources detected by the satellite's Large Area Telescope (LAT), producing an inventory of 1,873 objects shining with the highest-energy form of light. More than half of these sources are active galaxies whose supermassive black hole centers are causing the gamma-ray emissions. || ", "hits": 53 }, { "id": 10798, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10798/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-06-29T10:00:00-04:00", "title": "Stellar Odd Couple Makes Striking Flares", "description": "Every 3.4 years, pulsar B1259-63 dives twice through the gas disk surrounding the massive blue star it orbits. With each pass, it produces gamma rays. During the most recent event, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope observed that the pulsar's gamma-ray flare was much more intense the second time it plunged through the disk. Astronomers don't yet know why.For the B1259 binary animation, go here. || ", "hits": 45 }, { "id": 10767, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10767/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-05-11T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "NASA's Fermi Spots 'Superflares' in the Crab Nebula", "description": "The famous Crab Nebula supernova remnant has erupted in an enormous flare five times more powerful than any previously seen from the object. The outburst was first detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on April 12 and lasted six days.The nebula, which is the wreckage of an exploded star whose light reached Earth in 1054, is one of the most studied objects in the sky. At the heart of an expanding gas cloud lies what's left of the original star's core, a superdense neutron star that spins 30 times a second. With each rotation, the star swings intense beams of radiation toward Earth, creating the pulsed emission characteristic of spinning neutron stars (also known as pulsars). Apart from these pulses, astrophysicists regarded the Crab Nebula to be a virtually constant source of high-energy radiation. But in January, scientists associated with several orbiting observatories — including NASA's Fermi, Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer — reported long-term brightness changes at X-ray energies.Scientists think that the flares occur as the intense magnetic field near the pulsar undergoes sudden restructuring. Such changes can accelerate particles like electrons to velocities near the speed of light. As these high-speed electrons interact with the magnetic field, they emit gamma rays in a process known as synchrotron emission.To account for the observed emission, scientists say that the electrons must have energies 100 times greater than can be achieved in any particle accelerator on Earth. This makes them the highest-energy electrons known to be associated with any cosmic source.Based on the rise and fall of gamma rays during the April outbursts, scientists estimate that the size of the emitting region must be comparable in size to the solar system. If circular, the region must be smaller than roughly twice Pluto's average distance from the sun.For more Crab Nebula media go to #10708. || ", "hits": 56 }, { "id": 10708, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10708/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-01-12T12:00:00-05:00", "title": "A Flickering X-ray Candle", "description": "The Crab Nebula, created by a supernova seen nearly a thousand years ago, is one of the sky's most famous \"star wrecks.\" For decades, most astronomers have regarded it as the steadiest beacon at X-ray energies, but data from orbiting observatories show unexpected variations, showing astronomers their hard X-ray \"standard candle\" isn't as steady as they once thought. From 1999 to 2008, the Crab brightened and faded by as much as 3.5 percent a year, and since 2008, it has faded by 7 percent. The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor on NASA's Fermi satellite first detected the decline, and Fermi's Large Area Telescope also spotted two gamma-ray flares at even higher energies. Scientists think the X-rays reveal processes deep within the nebula, in a region powered by a rapidly spinning neutron star — the core of the star that blew up. But figuring out exactly where the Crab's X-rays are changing over the long term will require a new generation of X-ray telescopes. || ", "hits": 41 }, { "id": 10706, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10706/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-01-10T16:00:00-05:00", "title": "Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes Create Antimatter", "description": "NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected beams of antimatter launched by thunderstorms. Acting like enormous particle accelerators, the storms can emit gamma-ray flashes, called TGFs, and high-energy electrons and positrons. Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter.For additional animations showing bremsstrahlung and pair production gamma ray reactions, go here.For more visualizations showing Fermi's TGF detections, go to#3747, #3748, and #3756.For animations of the Fermi spacecraft and matter/antimatter, go to#10707 and #10651. || ", "hits": 185 }, { "id": 10707, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10707/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-01-10T16:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flash (TGF) Animations", "description": "NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected beams of antimatter launched by thunderstorms. Acting like enormous particle accelerators, the storms can emit gamma-ray flashes, called TGFs, and high-energy electrons and positrons. Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter. || ", "hits": 119 }, { "id": 10688, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10688/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2010-11-09T13:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi discovers giant gamma-ray bubbles in the Milky Way", "description": "Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists have recently discovered a gigantic, mysterious structure in our galaxy. This never-before-seen feature looks like a pair of bubbles extending above and below our galaxy's center. But these enormous gamma-ray emitting lobes aren't immediately visible in the Fermi all-sky map. However, by processing the data, a group of scientists was able to bring these unexpected structures into sharp relief. Each lobe is 25,000 light-years tall and the whole structure may be only a few million years old. Within the bubbles, extremely energetic electrons are interacting with lower-energy light to create gamma rays, but right now, no one knows the source of these electrons.Are the bubbles remnants of a massive burst of star formation? Leftovers from an eruption by the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center? Or or did these forces work in tandem to produce them? Scientists aren't sure yet, but the more they learn about this amazing structure, the better we'll understand the Milky Way.For an animation that shows the inverse Compton scattering responsible for the gamma rays, go to #10690.For an animation that shows an artist's interpretation of the Milky Way galaxy and the lobes, go to#10691. || ", "hits": 297 }, { "id": 10691, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10691/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2010-11-09T13:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi gamma-ray lobes animation", "description": "Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists have recently discovered a gigantic, mysterious structure in our galaxy. This never-before-seen feature looks like a pair of bubbles extending above and below our galaxy's center. Each lobe is 25,000 light-years tall and the whole structure may be only a few million years old. Are the bubbles remnants of a massive burst of star formation? Leftovers from an eruption by the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center? Or or did these forces work in tandem to produce them? Scientists aren't sure yet.For more content related to these bubbles, go to#10688. || ", "hits": 87 }, { "id": 20184, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20184/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2010-08-12T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi Sees a Nova", "description": "NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected gamma-rays from a nova for the first time. The finding stunned observers and theorists alike because it overturns a long-standing notion that novae explosions lack the power for such high-energy emissions. In March, Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) detected gamma rays — the most energetic form of light - from the nova for 15 days. Scientists believe that the emission arose as a million-mile-per-hour shock wave raced from the site of the explosion. A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. The outburst occurs when a white dwarf in a binary system erupts in an enormous thermonuclear explosion. \"In human terms, this was an immensely powerful eruption, equivalent to about 1,000 times the energy emitted by the sun every year,\" said Elizabeth Hays, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. \"But compared to other cosmic events Fermi sees, it was quite modest. We're amazed that Fermi detected it so strongly.\" More information here. || ", "hits": 97 }, { "id": 10566, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10566/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2010-02-13T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi Explores Supernova Remnants", "description": "Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) resolved gamma rays with energies a billion times greater than that of visible light from supernova remnants of different ages and in different environments. W51C, W44 and IC 443 are middle-aged remnants between 4,000 and 30,000 years old. The youngest remnant, Cassiopeia A, is only 330 years old and appears to the LAT as a point source. The images bring astronomers a step closer to understanding the source of some of the universe's most energetic particles — cosmic rays. The emissions are likely the result of accelerated protons interacting with nearby gas clouds, but other possibilities have not been eliminated. Astrophysicists believe that supernova remnants are the galaxy's best candidate sites for cosmic-ray acceleration. These observations provide further validation to the notion that supernova remnants act as enormous accelerators for cosmic particles. || ", "hits": 63 }, { "id": 10520, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10520/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2010-01-05T14:30:00-05:00", "title": "New Millisecond Radio Pulsars Found in Fermi LAT Unidentified Sources", "description": "Radio searches netted 17 new millisecond pulsars by examining the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's list of unidentified sources. Colored circles indicate the positions of the new pulsars on the Fermi one-year all-sky map. || ", "hits": 48 }, { "id": 10540, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10540/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-12-09T10:00:00-05:00", "title": "Brightest-ever Flare From Blazar 3C 454.3", "description": "The blazar 3C 454.3, which lies 7.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, underwent a series of intense flares in the fall of 2009. By December, it had become the brightest persistent gamma-ray source in the sky — more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer. These all-sky images, which record the numbers of high-energy gamma-rays captured by Fermi's Large Area Telescope on Dec. 3 and Nov. 18, clearly show the change. Typically, the Vela pulsar, which lies only 1,000 light-years away, is the sky's brightest persistent source of gamma rays. Blazar 3C 454.3, which is millions of times farther away, rose to twice Vela's brightness. Astronomers suspect the activity is driven by some change within the galaxy's black-hole-powered particle jet, but they do not understand the details. || ", "hits": 63 }, { "id": 10489, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10489/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-28T01:45:00-04:00", "title": "Gamma-ray Burst Photon Delay as Expected by Quantum Gravity", "description": "In this illustration, one photon (purple) carries a million times the energy of another (yellow). Some theorists predict travel delays for higher-energy photons, which interact more strongly with the proposed frothy nature of space-time. Yet Fermi data on two photons from a gamma-ray burst fail to show this effect, eliminating some approaches to a new theory of gravity. || ", "hits": 103 }, { "id": 10505, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10505/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-28T01:45:00-04:00", "title": "Blazars at Galactic North Pole, Seen in Fermi's First Year of Observations", "description": "Fermi has detected more than 1,000 gamma-ray sources. Half are associated with active galaxies called blazars. This movie shows one year of blazar activity, starting on Aug. 4, 2008, around the galactic north pole. This region includes the constellations Ursa Major, Virgo, Leo, Boötes, and Coma Berenices. || ", "hits": 29 }, { "id": 10507, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10507/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-28T01:45:00-04:00", "title": "Gamma-Rays from High-Mass X-Ray Binaries", "description": "In its first year, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered GeV (billions of electron volts) intensity variations revealing orbital motion in high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs). These are systems where a compact companion, such as a neutron star or a black hole, rapidly orbits a hot, young, massive star. The first examples include LSI +61 303, which sports a 26-day orbital period, and LS 5039 (3.9 days). This animation shows such a system. When the compact object lies far from its host star, TeV (trillions of electron volts) gamma-rays (white) are seen by ground-based gamma-ray observatories. But, as the object plunges closer to the star, the TeV emission is quenched and GeV emission turns on. Interactions by accelerated particles from the compact source with gas encircling the star — or in some systems, the star's light itself — is thought to be responsible for this change. || ", "hits": 41 }, { "id": 10508, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10508/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-28T01:45:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi All-Sky First Year Progress", "description": "This view of the gamma-ray sky constructed from one year of Fermi LAT observations is the best view of the extreme universe to date. The map shows the rate at which the LAT detects gamma rays with energies above 300 million electron volts — about 120 million times the energy of visible light — from different sky directions. Brighter colors equal higher rates. || ", "hits": 74 }, { "id": 10510, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10510/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-28T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Einstein's Cosmic Speed Limit", "description": "In its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has mapped the entire sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity in gamma-rays, the highest-energy form of light. On May 10, 2009 a pair of gamma-ray photons reached Fermi only 900 milliseconds apart after traveling for 7 billion years. Fermi's measurement gives us rare experimental evidence that space-time is smooth as Einstein predicted, and has shut the door on several approaches to gravity where space-time is foamy enough to interfere strongly with light.Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here. || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_512x288_web.png (320x180) [223.5 KB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_512x288_thm.png (80x40) [16.5 KB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_Thumbnail.jpg (346x260) [107.4 KB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_AppleTV.webmhd.webm (960x540) [82.4 MB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_AppleTV.m4v (960x540) [208.4 MB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_1280x720_H264.mov (1280x720) [433.5 MB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_1280x720_ProRes.mov (1280x720) [5.2 GB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_640x480_ipod.m4v (640x360) [68.6 MB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_512x288.mpg (512x288) [38.3 MB] || Einsteins_Cosmic_Speed_Limit_320x240.mp4 (320x180) [26.5 MB] || GSFC_20091029_EinsteinsCosmicSpeedLimit.wmv (346x236) [38.4 MB] || ", "hits": 53 }, { "id": 10426, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10426/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-07-02T13:50:00-04:00", "title": "Vela Pulsar in Gamma Rays", "description": "This movie shows pulsed gamma rays from the Vela pulsar as constructed from photons detected by Fermi's Large Area Telescope. The Vela pulsar, which spins 11 times a second, is the brightest persistent source of gamma rays in the sky. The movie includes data from August 4 to Sept. 15, 2008. The bluer color in the latter part of the pulse indicates the presence of gamma rays with energies exceeding a billion electron volts (1 GeV). For comparison, visible light has energies between two and three electron volts. Red indicates gamma rays with energies less than 300 million electron volts (MeV); green, gamma rays between 300 MeV and 1 GeV; and blue shows gamma rays greater than 1 GeV. The movie frame is 30 degrees across. The background, which shows diffuse gamma-ray emission from the Milky Way, is about 15 times brighter here than it actually is. || ", "hits": 84 }, { "id": 10407, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10407/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-04-03T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "Fermi All-sky Movie Shows Flaring, Fading Blazars", "description": "This all-sky movie shows counts of gamma rays with energies greater than 300 million electron volts from August 4 to October 30, 2008, detected by Fermi's Large Area Telescope. Brighter colors indicate brighter gamma-ray sources. The circles show the northern (left) and southern galactic sky. Their edges lie along the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Because this is an unusual view of the sky, the movies first overlay the stars and establish the locations of well- known constellations: Ursa Major (which includes the Big Dipper), Boötes, and Virgo in the northern galactic map; Cetus, Aries, and Pegasus in the southern galactic map. Notable gamma-ray sources include the sun (moving through the northern sky), the gamma-ray-only pulsar PSR J1836+5925 — a member of a new pulsar class discovered by Fermi — and numerous blazars (active galaxies). The blazars 3C 273, AO 0235+164, and PKS 1502+106 are highlighted. || ", "hits": 57 }, { "id": 10344, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10344/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-02-19T14:00:00-05:00", "title": "Fermi LAT movie of Gamma-ray Burst (GRB) 080916C", "description": "This movie compresses about 8 minutes of Fermi LAT observations of GRB 080916C into 6 seconds. Colored dots represent gamma rays of different energies. Visible light has energy between about 2 and 3 electron volts (eV). The blue dots represent lower-energy gamma rays (less than 100 million eV); green, moderate energies (100 million to 1 billion eV); and red, the highest energies (more than 1 billion eV). || ", "hits": 148 }, { "id": 10361, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10361/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-01-09T10:00:00-05:00", "title": "Pulsars Emit Gamma-rays from Equator", "description": "A pulsar is a rapidly spinning and highly magnetized neutron star, the crushed core left behind when a massive sun explodes. Most were found through their pulses at radio wavelengths, which are thought to be caused by narrow, lighthouse-like beams emanating from the star's magnetic poles. When it comes to gamma-rays, pulsars are no longer lighthouses. A new class of gamma-ray-only pulsars shows that the gamma rays must form in a broader region than the lighthouse-like radio beam. Astronomers now believe the pulsed gamma rays arise far above the neutron star. || ", "hits": 78 }, { "id": 10357, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10357/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-12-21T23:00:00-05:00", "title": "GLASTcast Episode 6: 2008 Mission Update", "description": "The GLAST mission launched on June 11, 2008 and has been returning remarkable and revolutionary discoveries ever since. Recently renamed to the Fermi Space Telescope, after Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, the mission is expected to discover dozens of new pulsars within its first year alone. The telescope is also giving us new insights into gamma-ray bursts and the massive jets that erupt from distant galaxies. Stay tuned — the mission of NASA's Fermi telescope is just getting started. || ", "hits": 41 }, { "id": 10347, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10347/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-08-26T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST First Light All Sky Map", "description": "NASA's newest observatory, the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), has begun its mission of exploring the universe in high-energy gamma rays. The spacecraft and its revolutionary instruments passed their orbital checkout with flying colors. NASA announced today that GLAST has been renamed the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The new name honors Prof. Enrico Fermi (1901 - 1954), a pioneer in high-energy physics. Scientists expect Fermi will discover many new pulsars in our own galaxy, reveal powerful processes near supermassive black holes at the cores of thousands of active galaxies across, and enable a search for signs of new physical laws. || ", "hits": 131 }, { "id": 10345, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10345/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-08-25T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLASTcast in HD for Apple TV and iTunes", "description": "The Universe is home to numerous exotic and beautiful phenomena, some of which can generate inconceivable amounts of energy. GLAST will open a new window on this high-energy world. With GLAST, astronomers will have a superior tool to study how black holes, notorious for pulling matter in, can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds. Physicists will be able to search for signals of new fundamental processes that are inaccessible in ground-based accelerators and observatories. GLAST's spectacular high-energy gamma-ray 'eyeglasses' will reveal hidden wonders, opening our minds to new possibilities and discoveries, expanding our understanding of the Universe and our place in it. || ", "hits": 37 }, { "id": 10323, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10323/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-08-05T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLASTCast Episode 3 - Swift and GLAST", "description": "NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. What's the difference between the Swift and GLAST satellites? Both missions look at gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), but in different ways. Swift can rapidly and precisely determine the locations of GRBs and observe their afterglows at X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical wavelengths. GLAST will provide exquisite observations of the burst over the gamma ray spectrum, giving scientists their first complete view of the total energy released in these extraordinary events. Beyond GRB science, GLAST is a multipurpose observatory that will study a broad range of cosmic phenomena. Swift is also a multipurpose observatory, but was built primarily to study GRBs. Interviews with (in order of appearance): David Thompson - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Charles \"Chip\" Meegan - GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) Principal Investigator, NASA Marshall Lynn Cominsky - GLAST Astrophysicist and Education and Public Outreach Lead, Sonoma State University Neil Gehrels - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Steve Ritz - GLAST Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Alan Marscher - Professor of Astronomy, Boston University || ", "hits": 19 }, { "id": 10324, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10324/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-08-05T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLASTcast Episode 4: Launching a Spacecraft", "description": "NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. The GLAST satellite will launch in 2008 from Cape Canaveral Air Station, on Florida's east coast. GLAST will be carried on a Delta II Heavy launch vehicle, with 9 solid rocket boosters. GLAST is the first imaging gamma-ray observatory to survey the entire sky every day and with high sensitivity. It will give scientists a unique opportunity to learn about the ever-changing Universe at extreme energies. Interviews with (in order of appearance): Peter Michaelson - Large Area Telescope (LAT) Principal Investigator, Stanford University Lynn Cominsky - GLAST Astrophysicist and Education and Public Outreach Lead, Sonoma State University David Thompson - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Kevin Grady - GLAST Project Manager, NASA Goddard Neil Johnson - Large Area Telescope (LAT) Deputy Principal Investigator, US Naval Research Lab Jonathan Ormes - Large Area Telescope (LAT) Senior Scientist Advisory Committee, University of Denver Charles \"Chip\" Meegan - GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) Principal Investigator, NASA Marshall Luke Drury - Professor of Astronomy, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Per Carlson - Professor of Elementary Particle Physics, Manne Siegbahn Laboratory Isabelle Grenier - Principal Investigator of the GLAST French contribution, French Atomic Energy Commission || ", "hits": 15 }, { "id": 10325, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10325/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-08-05T01:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLASTcast Episode 5: Meet the U.S. Team", "description": "NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. This video introduces only a small fraction of the hundreds of U.S. and international GLAST team members. To meet more of the team go to: www.nasa.gov/glast. Interviews with (in order of appearance): Bill Atwood - GLAST Co-Creator, Santa Cruz Institute of Particle Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz David Thompson - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Julie McEnery - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Steve Ritz - GLAST Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Neil Gehrels - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Peter Michaelson - Large Area Telescope (LAT) Principal Investigator, Stanford University Kevin Grady - GLAST Project Manager, NASA Goddard Charles \"Chip\" Meegan - GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) Principal Investigator, NASA Marshall || ", "hits": 23 }, { "id": 10322, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10322/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-07-30T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST Soundbites", "description": "Selected soundbites with Steve Ritz, GLAST Project Scientist; Peter Michelson, LAT Principal Investigator; Charles 'Chip' Meegan, GBM Principal Investigator. NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. || ", "hits": 26 }, { "id": 20170, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20170/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2008-07-23T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST - Print Still Images - Wallpaper", "description": "Stills from the animation series, these 300dpi .tiff files are suitable for framing. || Print1 || glast-PRINT1.jpg (2096x1179) [893.9 KB] || glast-PRINT1_web.png (320x180) [254.2 KB] || glast-PRINT1_thm.png (80x40) [19.6 KB] || glast-PRINT1.tif (2096x1179) [9.5 MB] || Print2 || glast-PRINT2.jpg (2096x1179) [937.6 KB] || glast-PRINT2_web.png (320x180) [313.4 KB] || glast-PRINT2.tif (2096x1179) [9.5 MB] || ", "hits": 11 }, { "id": 10250, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10250/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-06-03T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLASTcast for iTunes", "description": "The GLAST mission launched on June 11, 2008 and has been returning remarkable and revolutionary discoveries ever since. Recently renamed to the Fermi Space Telescope, after Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, the mission is expected to discover dozens of new pulsars within the first year alone. The telescope is also giving us new insights into gamma-ray bursts and the massive jets that erupt from distant galaxies. Stay tuned — the mission of NASA's Fermi telescope is just getting started. || ", "hits": 34 }, { "id": 10251, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10251/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-05-31T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST Prelude, for Brass Quintet, Op.12", "description": "NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institiutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. Music composed by Nolan Gasser, © 2008 Music performed by the American Brass Quintet || ", "hits": 26 }, { "id": 10247, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10247/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-05-29T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLASTcast Episode 1: What is GLAST?", "description": "NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. The Universe is home to numerous exotic and beautiful phenomena, some of which can generate inconceivable amounts of energy. GLAST will open a new window on this high-energy world. With GLAST, astronomers will have a superior tool to study how black holes, notorious for pulling matter in, can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds. Physicists will be able to search for signals of new fundamental processes that are inaccessible in ground-based accelerators and observatories. GLAST's spectacular high-energy gamma-ray \"eyeglasses\" will reveal hidden wonders, opening our minds to new possibilities and discoveries, expanding our understanding of the Universe and our place in it. Interviews with (in order of appearance): Steve Ritz - GLAST Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Peter Michaelson - Large Area Telescope (LAT) Principal Investigator, Stanford University Diego Torres - Large Area Telescope (LAT) Scientist, University of Barcelona Neil Gehrels - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard David Thompson - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Luke Drury - Professor of Astronomy, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Valerie Connaughton - GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) Team, NASA Marshall/University of Alabama Martin Pohl - GLAST Interdisciplinary Scientist, Iowa State University Per Carlson - Professor of Elementary Particle Physics, Manne Siegbahn Laboratory Charles \"Chip\" Meegan - GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) Principal Investigator, NASA Marshall Alan Marscher - Professor of Astronomy, Boston University Julie McEnery - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard || ", "hits": 22 }, { "id": 10248, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10248/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-05-23T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLASTcast Episode 2: What are Gamma Rays?", "description": "NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. Somewhere out in the vast depths of space, a giant star explodes with the power of millions of suns. As the star blows up, a black hole forms at its center. The black hole blows two blowtorches in opposite directions, in narrow jets of gamma rays. NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, will catch about 200 of these explosions, known as gamma-ray bursts, each year. GLAST's detailed observations may give astronomers the clues they need to unravel the mystery of what exactly produces these gamma-ray bursts, which are the brightest explosions in the universe since the Big Bang. Interviews with (in order of appearance): Phil Plait - Astronomer, Bad Astronomy David Thompson - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Valerie Connaughton - GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) Team, NASA Marshall/University of Alabama Neil Gehrels - GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Isabelle Grenier - Principal Investigator of the GLAST French contribution, French Atomic Energy Commission Peter Michaelson - Large Area Telescope (LAT) Principal Investigator, Stanford University Charles \"Chip\" Meegan - GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) Principal Investigator, NASA Marshall Martin Pohl - GLAST Interdisciplinary Scientist, Iowa State University Steve Ritz - GLAST Project Scientist, NASA Goddard || ", "hits": 55 }, { "id": 20139, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20139/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2008-05-22T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Gamma Ray Burst", "description": "This animation was used to illustrate a gamma ray burst that NASA's SWIFT might see. || Gamma Ray Burst || GRBHD039100377_print.jpg (1024x576) [43.9 KB] || GRBHD0391_web.png (320x180) [267.8 KB] || GRBHD0391_thm.png (80x40) [15.0 KB] || 1280x720_16x9_60p (1280x720) [32.0 KB] || grb_hd_720p.m2v (1280x720) [20.5 MB] || grb_hd_720p.webmhd.webm (960x540) [2.0 MB] || a010245_grb_hd_720p.mp4 (640x360) [1.6 MB] || grb_hd_512x288.m1v (512x288) [2.9 MB] || ", "hits": 82 }, { "id": 20135, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20135/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2008-04-16T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Gamma Rays in Active Galactic Nuclei", "description": "This animation shows how gamma rays possibly form in Active Galactic Nuclei. || ", "hits": 134 }, { "id": 20136, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20136/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2008-04-16T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Gamma Rays in Pulsars", "description": "This animation takes us into a spinning pulsar, with its strong magnetic field rotating along with it. Clouds of charged particles move along the field lines and their gamma-rays are beamed like a lighthouse beacon by the magnetic fields. As our line of sight moves into the beam, we see the pulsations once every rotation of the neutron star. || ", "hits": 85 }, { "id": 10165, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10165/", "result_type": "B-Roll", "release_date": "2007-09-17T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST LAT Testing - B-Roll", "description": "The GLAST LAT (Large Area Telescope) was tested extensively during the summer of 2006 at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. The NRL also contributed to the GLAST project by managing the construction of the LAT Calorimeter. || ", "hits": 22 }, { "id": 10169, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10169/", "result_type": "B-Roll", "release_date": "2007-09-17T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST LAT Integration - B-Roll", "description": "In fall of 2006, the LAT was shipped to the General Dynamics facility in Arizona for integration onto the spacecraft bus. The General Dynamics spacecraft bus provides the power, data, and pointing resources that will enable the LAT to perform its survey of the Universe. Subsequent to the mechanical integration, the command, data, and power interfaces between the instrument and the spacecraft were tested rigorously to insure the compatibility of this spaceflight hardware that had been manufactured all around the globe. || ", "hits": 20 }, { "id": 10172, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10172/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2007-09-17T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST Promo Video", "description": "NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is a powerful space observatory that will open a wide window on the universe. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light and the gamma-ray sky is spectacularly different from the one we perceive with our own eyes. With a huge leap in all key capabilities, GLAST data will enable scientists to answer persistent questions across a broad range of topics, including supermassive black-hole systems, pulsars, the origina of cosmic rays, and searches for signals new physics. NASA's GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. || ", "hits": 26 }, { "id": 20119, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20119/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2007-09-14T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "The GLAST (Fermi) Spacecraft in Orbit", "description": "GLAST will be launched into a circular orbit around the Earth at an altitude of about 560 km (350 miles). At that altitude, the observatory will circle Earth every 90 minutes. In sky-survey mode, GLAST will be able to view the entire sky in just two orbits, or about 3 hours. Because gamma rays in the GLAST's energy band are unable to penetrate the Earth's atmostphere, it is essential that GLAST perform its observations from space. || ", "hits": 39 }, { "id": 20120, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20120/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2007-09-14T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "360 Degrees of GLAST", "description": "GLAST will carry two instruments: the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM). The LAT is GLAST's primary instrument and consists of four components: the Tracker, the Calorimeter, the Anticoincidence Detector (ACD), and the Data Acquisition System (DAQ). These instrument components working together will detect gamma rays by using Einstein's famous equation (E=mc(squared) in a technique known as pair production. The GLAST Burst Monitor is a complementary instrument and consists of low-energy detectors, high-energy detectors, and data processing unit. The GBM can see all directions at once, except for the area where Earth blocks its view. When the GBM detects a bright gamma-ray burst, it immediately sends a signal to the LAT to observe that area of the sky. || ", "hits": 25 }, { "id": 20121, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20121/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2007-09-14T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST's New Window on the Universe", "description": "The Universe is home to numerous extoic and beautiful phenomena, some of which can generate inconceiveable amounts of energy. GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope) will open this high-energy world as the first imaging gamma-ray observatory to survey the entire sky every day and with high sensitivity. Astronomers will gain a superior tool to study how black holes, notorious for pulling matter in, can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds. Physicists will be able to search for signals of new fundamental processes that are inaccessable in ground-based accelerators and observatories. And scientists will have a unique opportunity to learn about the every-changing Universe at extreme energies. || ", "hits": 42 }, { "id": 20123, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20123/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2007-09-14T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "GLAST Launch and Deployment", "description": "GLAST's launch is scheduled for early 2008 from Cape Canaveral Air Station on Florida's eastern coast. GLAST will be carried on a Delta II Heavy launch vehicle, with 9 solid rocket boosters. The solids are actually from the Delta III series (hence the term 'heavy'), mounted on a Delta II. It has a 10-foot fairing and two stages. Stowed in the launch vehicle, the spacecraft is 9.2 feet (2.8 meters) high by 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter. Once deployed, GLAST becomes a little bit taller and much wider (15 meters) with the Ku-band antenna deployed and the solar arrays extended. || ", "hits": 32 }, { "id": 3439, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3439/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2007-09-13T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Simulations of the Gamma-Ray Sky", "description": "The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) will observe the sky in gamma-rays with energies between 10 million electron volts (MeV) to 300 billion electron volts (GeV) (a photon of visible light is roughly 2 electron volts). At these energies, the detectors will receive roughly 2 photons every second. At these energies, the objects visible will be active galaxies, quasars, pulsars, and gamma-ray bursts. This visualization is generated from one year of simulated photon event-lists using known sources. These event lists are used for testing the various data analysis software being developed for the project. Due to the extremely low event rate, it takes about one week of event accumulation to see structure in the sky. To generate the 600+ frames of this visualization, the event lists were box-car averaged for a duration of one week for each frame, and each frame shifted 50,000 seconds in time from the previous frame. The low angular resolution of gamma-ray detectors makes point sources appear spread out in the sky. In these maps, the color of each pixel represents the number of photons accumulated in that pixel (over an energy range of 10MeV-300GeV). Horizontally, across the center of the map, is the diffuse emission from the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy. The images are projected in galactic coordinates with a plate carrée projection so there is significant distortion with increasing latitude above the galactic disk. This emission in the galactic plane is created by pulsars and supernova remnants. Located away from this plane is emission from active galaxies and high-velocity pulsars. Occasionally, a bright spot appears which can be a gamma-ray burst or quasar in an active state. || ", "hits": 68 }, { "id": 20113, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20113/", "result_type": "Animation", "release_date": "2007-09-07T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Gamma Ray Creation", "description": "Gamma rays are the highest-energy forms of light in the electromagnetic spectrum and they can have over a billion times the energy of the type of light visible to the human eye. Gamma rays can be created in several different ways: a high-energy particle can collide with another particle, a particle can collide and annihilate with its anti-particle, an element can undergo radioactive decay, or a charged particle can be accelerated. In this animation, we see a high-energy photon collide with a free electron, which causes the creation of a gamma-ray. || ", "hits": 205 } ] }