Topic: NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

NASA reports World Telescopes Directly Image Black Hole

April 16, 2021 |

Pasadena, CA – NASA says some of the world’s most powerful telescopes simultaneously observed the supermassive black hole in galaxy M87, the first black hole to be directly imaged.

In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told.

Data from 19 observatories are being released that promise to give unparalleled insight into this black hole and the system it powers, and to improve tests of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

Different wavelengths of light can reveal unique features of the same cosmic object. A jet of material being spewed into space by a supermassive black hole in galaxy M87 is shown here in wavelengths ranging from radio waves to gamma rays. (NASA/ESA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/CXC/EHT)

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NASA Pinpoints Source of Unique X-ray, Radio Burst

November 5, 2020 |

Pasadena, CA – On April 28th, a supermagnetized stellar remnant known as a magnetar blasted out a simultaneous mix of X-ray and radio signals never observed before. The flare-up included the first fast radio burst (FRB) ever seen from within our Milky Way galaxy and shows that magnetars can produce these mysterious and powerful radio blasts previously only seen in other galaxies.

“Before this event, a wide variety of scenarios could explain the origin of FRBs,” said Chris Bochenek, a doctoral student in astrophysics at Caltech who led one study of the radio event.

A powerful X-ray burst erupts from a magnetar – a supermagnetized version of a stellar remnant known as a neutron star – in this illustration. A radio burst detected April 28 occurred during a flare-up like this on a magnetar called SGR 1935. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA))

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NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope examines Pulsar’s Gamma-rays connection to Antimatter around Earth

December 30, 2019 |

Greenbelt, MD – NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a faint but sprawling glow of high-energy light around a nearby pulsar. If visible to the human eye, this gamma-ray “halo” would appear about 40 times bigger in the sky than a full Moon. This structure may provide the solution to a long-standing mystery about the amount of antimatter in our neighborhood.

“Our analysis suggests that this same pulsar could be responsible for a decade-long puzzle about why one type of cosmic particle is unusually abundant near Earth,” said Mattia Di Mauro, an astrophysicist at the Catholic University of America in Washington and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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NASA’s Fermi Telescope, Swift Observatory capture highest-energy light every recorded from Gamma Ray Burst

November 23, 2019 |

Greenbelt, MD – A pair of distant explosions discovered by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have produced the highest-energy light yet seen from these events, called gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The record-setting detections, made by two different ground-based observatories, provide new insights into the mechanisms driving gamma-ray bursts.

Astronomers first recognized the GRB phenomenon 46 years ago. The blasts appear at random locations in the sky about once a day, on average.

On Jan. 14, 2019, the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) observatory in the Canary Islands captured the highest-energy light every recorded from a gamma-ray burst. MAGIC began observing the fading burst just 50 seconds after it was detected thanks to positions provided by NASA’s Fermi and Swift spacecraft (top left and right, respectively, in this illustration). (NASA/Fermi and Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University)

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NASA says network of Telescopes captures historic Black Hole image

April 11, 2019 |

NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – A black hole and its shadow have been captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation.

A black hole is an extremely dense object from which no light can escape. Anything that comes within a black hole’s “event horizon,” its point of no return, will be consumed, never to re-emerge, because of the black hole’s unimaginably strong gravity.

Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. (Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration)

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NASA Telescopes discover Electromagnetic waves from a Gravitational Wave Source

October 21, 2018 |

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – About a year ago, astronomers excitedly reported the first detection of electromagnetic waves, or light, from a gravitational wave source. Now, a year later, researchers are announcing the existence of a cosmic relative to that historic event.

The discovery was made using data from telescopes including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and the Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT).

A distant cosmic relative to the first source that astronomers detected in both gravitational waves and light may have been discovered. This object, called GRB150101B, was first detected by identified as a gamma ray burst (GRB) by the NASA’s Fermi satellite in January 2015. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/GSFC/UMC/E. Troja et al.; Optical and infrared: NASA/STScI)

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NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope team creates set of new Constellations

October 19, 2018 |

Written by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – NASA says Long ago, sky watchers linked the brightest stars into patterns reflecting animals, heroes, monsters and even scientific instruments into what is now an official collection of 88 constellations. Now scientists with NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have devised a set of modern constellations constructed from sources in the gamma-ray sky to celebrate the mission’s 10th year of operations.

The new constellations include a few characters from modern myths. Among them are the Little Prince, the time-warping TARDIS from “Doctor Who,” Godzilla and his heat ray, the antimatter-powered U.S.S. Enterprise from “Star Trek: The Original Series” and the Hulk, the product of a gamma-ray experiment gone awry.

New, unofficial constellations appear in this image of the sky mapped by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi scientists devised the constellations to highlight the mission’s 10th year of operations. Fermi has mapped about 3,000 gamma-ray sources — 10 times the number known before its launch and comparable to the number of bright stars in the traditional constellations. (NASA)

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NASA Scientists use “Pulsar in a Box” to gain better understanding of Neutron Stars

October 14, 2018 |

Written by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – An international team of scientists studying what amounts to a computer-simulated “pulsar in a box” are gaining a more detailed understanding of the complex, high-energy environment around spinning neutron stars, also called pulsars.

The model traces the paths of charged particles in magnetic and electric fields near the neutron star, revealing behaviors that may help explain how pulsars emit gamma-ray and radio pulses with ultraprecise timing.

Electrons (blue) and positrons (red) from a computer-simulated pulsar. These particles become accerlated to extreme energies in a pulsar’s powerful magnetic and electric fields; lighter tracks show particles with higher energies. Each particle seen here actually represents trillions of electrons or positrons. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

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NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope discovers High Energy Neutrino coming from Supermassive Black Hole

July 15, 2018 |

NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – For the first time ever, scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found the source of a high-energy neutrino from outside our galaxy. This neutrino traveled 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light before being detected on Earth. This is farther than any other neutrino whose origin scientists can identify.

High-energy neutrinos are hard-to-catch particles that scientists think are created by the most powerful events in the cosmos, such as galaxy mergers and material falling onto supermassive black holes. They travel at speeds just shy of the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter, allowing them to travel unimpeded across distances of billions of light-years.

NASA’s Fermi (top left) has achieved a new first—identifying a monster black hole in a far-off galaxy as the source of a high-energy neutrino seen by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory (sensor strings, bottom). (NASA/Fermi and Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University)

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NASA 2017 Highlights

December 24, 2017 |

Written by Jen Rae Wang / Allard Beutel
NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – The Moon became a key focus point for NASA in 2017, whether it was blocking out the Sun during one of the most-viewed events in U.S. history, or reinvigorating the agency’s human space exploration plans.

One of the numerous NASA-related activities and actions the Trump Administration did in 2017 was to reconstitute the National Space Council. During its first meeting on October 5th, Vice President Mike Pence directed NASA to develop a plan to help extend human exploration across our solar system, and return astronauts to the Moon in preparation for human missions to Mars and other destinations.

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