FERMI GAMMA RAY SPACE TELESCOPE

Scientists using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have measured all the starlight produced over 90 percent of the universe's history. The analysis, which examines the gamma-ray output of distant galaxies, estimates the formation rate of stars and provides a reference for future missions that will explore the still-murky early days of stellar evolution. One of the main goals of the Fermi mission is to assess the extragalactic background light (EBL), a cosmic fog composed of all the ultraviolet, visible and infrared light stars have created over the universe's history. Because starlight continues to travel across the cosmos long after its sources have burned out, measuring the EBL allows astronomers to study stellar formation and evolution separately from the stars themselves. The collision between a high-energy gamma ray and infrared light transforms the energy into a pair of particles, an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. The same process occurs when medium-energy gamma rays interact with visible light, and low-energy gamma rays interact with ultraviolet light. Enough of these interactions occur over cosmic distances that the farther back scientists look, the more evident their effects become on gamma-ray sources, enabling a deep probe of the universe's stellar content. The scientists examined gamma-ray signals from 739 blazars -- galaxies with monster black holes at their centers -- collected over nine years by Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT). The measurement quintuples the number of blazars used in an earlier Fermi EBL analysis published in 2012 and includes new calculations of how the EBL builds over time, revealing the peak of star formation around 10 billion years ago. Music: "Inducing Waves" from Killer Tracks Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park): Lead Science Writer LK Ward (USRA): Narrator Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Science Writer Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-fermi-traces-the-history-of-starlight-across-cosmos This video is public domain and may be downloaded at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13104 If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix · Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC · Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc

For the first time ever, scientists using Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found the source of a high-energy neutrino from outside our galaxy. This neutrino travelled 3.7 billion years at nearly light speed before being detected on Earth -- farther than any other neutrino we know the origin of. High-energy neutrinos are hard-to-catch particles that scientists think are created by the most powerful events in the cosmos, like galaxy mergers and material falling onto supermassive black holes. They travel a whisker shy of the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter, so they can travel unimpeded across billions of light-years. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole detected signs of a neutrino striking the Antarctic ice with an energy of about 300 trillion electron volts -- more than 45 times the energy achievable in the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth. This high energy strongly suggested that the neutrino had to be from beyond our solar system. Backtracking the path through IceCube indicated where in the sky the neutrino came from, and automated alerts notified astronomers around the globe to search this region for flares or outbursts that could be associated with the event. Data from Fermi’s Large Area Telescope revealed enhanced gamma-ray emission from a well-known active galaxy at the time the neutrino arrived. This active galaxy is a type called a blazar, where a supermassive black hole with millions to billions of times the Sun’s mass that blasts particle jets outward in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. Blazars are especially bright and active because one of these jets happens to point almost directly toward Earth. Fermi showed that at the time of the neutrino detection, the blazar TXS 0506+056 was the most active it had been in a decade. The discovery is a giant leap forward in a growing field called multimessenger astronomy, where new cosmic signals like neutrinos and gravitational waves are definitively linked to sources that emit light. Light Years Away

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) is one of the instruments aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The GBM studies gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, as well as other flashes of gamma rays. Gamma-ray bursts are created when massive stars collapse into black holes or when two superdense stars merge, also producing a black hole. The GBM sees these bursts across the entire sky, and scientists are using its observations to learn more about the universe. Music: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Credit:NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Shoshana Schlauderaff: Lead Producer Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Support Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems Inc.): Technical Support Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park): Science Writer Judith Racusin (NASA/GSFC): Narrator This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13041 If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC · Twitter https://twitter.com/NASAGoddard · Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/ · Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard/

A single gamma ray carries millions of times the energy of a single photon of visible light. This means that gamma rays are produced only in the most convulsive environments in the universe – pulsars spinning inside huge magnetic fields, stars in binary systems devouring their partners, and black holes at the centers of galaxies swallowing gas clouds more massive than our sun. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was launched on June 11, 2008, to measure these extreme astronomical events. In this lecture, SLAC scientist Eric Charles describes how we observe astronomical gamma rays and why we must go to space to see them. Then he discusses how 10 years of observations from the Fermi Telescope have changed our understanding of the most violent objects in the universe. About the Speaker: Eric Charles grew up in New Mexico. He received his PhD in high-energy particle physics from the University of Wisconsin in 2002. After three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, he moved to SLAC in 2005 to help with the construction and testing of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and stayed on as a member of the Fermi instrument team. He’s been working to improve the performance of the telescope and actively studying the data it gathers on the gamma-ray sky. His hobbies include metal-working and pyrotechnics.

On June 11, 2018, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope celebrated a decade of using gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light in the cosmos, to study black holes, neutron stars, and other extreme cosmic objects and events. Fermi’s main instrument, the Large Area Telescope (LAT), has observed more than 5,000 individual gamma-ray sources. In 1949, Enrico Fermi — an Italian-American pioneer in high-energy physics and Nobel laureate for whom the mission was named — suggested that cosmic rays, particles traveling at nearly the speed of light, could be propelled by supernova shock waves. In 2013, Fermi’s LAT used gamma rays to prove these stellar remnants are at least one source of the speedy particles. Fermi’s all-sky map, produced by the LAT, has revealed two massive structures extending above and below the plane of the Milky Way. These two “bubbles” span 50,000 light-years and were probably produced by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy only a few million years ago. The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), Fermi’s secondary instrument, can see the entire sky at any instant, except the portion blocked by Earth. The satellite has observed over 2,300 gamma-ray bursts, the most luminous events in the universe. Gamma-ray bursts occur when massive stars collapse or neutron stars or black holes merge and drive jets of particles at nearly the speed of light. In those jets, matter travels at different speeds and collides, emitting gamma rays. On Aug. 17, 2017, Fermi detected a gamma-ray burst from a powerful explosion in the constellation Hydra. At almost the same time, the National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory detected ripples in space-time from the same event, the merger of two neutron stars. This was the first time light and gravitational waves were detected from the same source. Scientists also used another gamma-ray burst detected by Fermi to confirm Einstein’s theory that space-time is smooth and continuous. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park): Lead Science Writer Julie McEnery (NASA/GSFC): Narrator Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Science Writer Chris Meaney (KBRwyle): Animator Walt Feimer (KBRwyle): Animator Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Animator Music: "Unseen Husband" from Killer Tracks

Fermi bubbles are made up of gamma rays, but where they came from is still up for debate. Did they come from a star-forming region, or the black hole at the middle of our galaxy? For special, curated artifacts of this universe, check out https://scishowfinds.com/ Hosted by: Caitlin Hofmeister ---------- Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scishow ---------- Dooblydoo thanks go to the following Patreon supporters: Jerry Perez, Lazarus G, Kelly Landrum Jones, Sam Lutfi, Kevin Knupp, Nicholas Smith, D.A. Noe, alexander wadsworth, سلطان الخليفي, Piya Shedden, KatieMarie Magnone, Scott Satovsky Jr, Charles Southerland, Bader AlGhamdi, James Harshaw, Patrick D. Ashmore, Candy, Tim Curwick, charles george, Saul, Mark Terrio-Cameron, Viraansh Bhanushali, Kevin Bealer, Philippe von Bergen, Chris Peters, Justin Lentz ---------- Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids? Check out our awesome products over at DFTBA Records: http://dftba.com/scishow ---------- Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scishow Tumblr: http://scishow.tumblr.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow ---------- Sources: https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/01/star-formation-drives-huge-bubbles-in-the-milky-way/ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/new-structure.html https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100303-gamma-ray-fog-fermi-dragons/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/highest-energy-cosmic-rays-bounce-off-bubble-irradiate-earth/ http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/understanding-fermi-bubbles/ http://astronomy.com/news/2017/03/fermi-bubbles http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-10 Images: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12313 https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/new-structure.html https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20142 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30682 https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30796

On Aug. 17, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope saw a short burst of gamma rays a smashup of neutron stars, marking the first-ever detection of light from a gravitational wave source. NASA scientists Colleen Wilson-Hodge and Tyson Littenberg explain what happened and what it means for science and discovery.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found a signal at the center of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy that could indicate the presence of the mysterious stuff known as dark matter. The gamma-ray signal is similar to one seen by Fermi at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light, produced by the universe's most energetic phenomena. They're common in galaxies like the Milky Way because cosmic rays, particles moving near the speed of light, produce gamma rays when they interact with interstellar gas clouds and starlight. Surprisingly, the latest Fermi data shows the gamma rays in Andromeda, also known as M31, are confined to the galaxy's center instead of spread throughout. To explain this unusual distribution, scientists are proposing that the emission may come from several undetermined sources. One of them could be dark matter, an unknown substance that makes up most of the universe. NASA's Fermi telescope has detected a gamma-ray excess at the center of the Andromeda galaxy that's similar to a signature Fermi previously detected at the center of our own Milky Way. Watch to learn more. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger Music: "Lost Time" from Killer Tracks For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasas-fermi-finds-possible-dark-matter-ties-in-andromeda-galaxy This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12505 If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer Or subscribe to NASA’s Goddard Shorts HD Podcast: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard · Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/ · Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard/ · Google+ http://plus.google.com/+NASAGoddard/posts

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can now detect solar flares occuring on the side of the sun it cannot see. This could help scientists better understand solar storms and improve forecasts for future outbursts. Video courtesy of NASA Read more: http://www.techinsider.io/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/techinsider TWITTER: https://twitter.com/businessinsider INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/businessinsider/ TUMBLR: http://businessinsider.tumblr.com/

Most Important UPSC Current Affairs for Prelims 2017 - Fermi Mission / Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has identified the farthest gamma-ray blazars, a type of galaxy whose intense emissions are powered by supersized black holes. Light from the most distant object began its journey to us when the universe was 1.4 billion years old, or nearly 10 percent of its present age. Despite their youth, these far-flung blazars host some of the most massive black holes known. That they developed so early in cosmic history challenges current ideas of how supermassive black holes form and grow. Blazars constitute roughly half of the gamma-ray sources detected by Fermis Large Area Telescope (LAT). Astronomers think their high-energy emissions are powered by matter heated and torn apart as it falls from a storage, or accretion, disk toward a supermassive black hole with a million or more times the sun’s mass. A small part of this infalling material becomes redirected into a pair of particle jets, which blast outward in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. Blazars appear bright in all forms of light, including gamma rays, the highest-energy light, when one of the jets happens to point almost directly toward us. Previously, the most distant blazars detected by Fermi emitted their light when the universe was about 2.1 billion years old. Earlier observations showed that the most distant blazars produce most of their light at energies right in between the range detected by the LAT and current X-ray satellites, which made finding them extremely difficult. Then, in 2015, the Fermi team released a full reprocessing of all LAT data, called Pass 8, that ushered in so many improvements astronomers said it was like having a brand new instrument. The LATs boosted sensitivity at lower energies increased the chances of discovering more far-off blazars. Two of the blazars boast black holes of a billion solar masses or more. All of the objects possess extremely luminous accretion disks that emit more than two trillion times the energy output of our sun. This means matter is continuously falling inward, corralled into a disk and heated before making the final plunge to the black hole. NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered the five most distant gamma-ray blazars yet known. The light detected by Fermi left these galaxies by the time the universe was two billion years old. Two of these galaxies harbor billion-solar-mass black holes that challenge current ideas about how quickly such monsters could grow. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasas-fermi-discovers-the-most-extreme-blazars-yet This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12454 If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer Or subscribe to NASA’s Goddard Shorts HD Podcast: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard · Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/ · Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard/ · Google+ http://plus.google.com/+NASAGoddard/posts

An international science team says NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has observed high-energy light from solar eruptions located on the far side of the sun, which should block direct light from these events. This apparent paradox is providing solar scientists with a unique tool for exploring how charged particles are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and move across the sun during solar flares. Fermi has seen gamma rays from the Earth-facing side of the sun, but the emission is produced by streams of particles blasted out of solar flares on the far side These particles must travel some 300,000 miles within about five minutes of the eruption to produce this light. Fermi has doubled the number of these rare events, called behind-the-limb flares, since it began scanning the sky in 2008. Its Large Area Telescope (LAT) has captured gamma rays with energies reaching 3 billion electron volts, some 30 times greater than the most energetic light previously associated with these "hidden" flares. Thanks to NASAs Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft, which were monitoring the solar far side when the eruptions occurred, the Fermi events mark the first time scientists have direct imaging of beyond-the-limb solar flares associated with high-energy gamma rays. The hidden flares occurred Oct. 11, 2013, and Jan. 6 and Sept. 1, 2014. All three events were associated with fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs), where billion-ton clouds of solar plasma were launched into space. The CME from the most recent event was moving at nearly 5 million miles an hour as it left the sun. Researchers suspect particles accelerated at the leading edge of the CMEs were responsible for the gamma-ray emission. Large magnetic field structures can connect the acceleration site with distant part of the solar surface. Because charged particles must remain attached to magnetic field lines, the research team thinks particles accelerated as the CME traveled to the sun’s visible side along magnetic field lines connecting both locations. As the particles impacted the surface, they generated gamma-ray emission through a variety of processes. One prominent mechanism is thought to be proton collisions that result in a particle called a pion, which quickly decays into gamma rays. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessenger Music: "Jupiters Eye" from Killer Tracks Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasas-fermi-sees-gamma-rays-from-hidden-solar-flares/ This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12451 If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer Or subscribe to NASA’s Goddard Shorts HD Podcast: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard · Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/ · Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard/ · Google+ http://plus.google.com/+NASAGoddard/posts

A software upgrade on the ground to analyze data retrieved from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's Large Area Telescope (LAT) has increased quality by 40 percent. The NASA Fermi team says it "effectively sharpens the LAT's view while also significantly widening its useful energy range. -- Full Story: http://goo.gl/EPRBwV Credit: NASA/GSFC

This image, constructed from more than six years of observations by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, is the first to show how the entire sky appears at energies between 50 billion (GeV) and 2 trillion electron volts (TeV). A diffuse glow fills the sky and is brightest in the middle of the map, along the central plane of our galaxy. The famous Fermi Bubbles, first detected in 2010, appear as red extensions north and south of the galactic center and are much more pronounced at these energies. Discrete gamma-ray sources include pulsar wind nebulae and supernova remnants within our galaxy, as well as distant galaxies called blazars powered by supermassive black holes. Labels show the highest-energy sources, all located within our galaxy and emitting gamma rays exceeding 1 TeV. Major improvements to methods used to process observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have yielded an expanded, higher-quality set of data that allows astronomers to produce the most detailed census of the sky yet made at extreme energies. This new sky map reveals hundreds of these sources, including 12 that produce gamma rays with energies exceeding a trillion times the energy of visible light. The survey also discovered four dozen new sources that remain undetected at any other wavelength. The improved data, known as Pass 8, effectively sharpens the Large Area Telescope's (LAT) view while also significantly widening its useful energy range. Using 61,000 Pass 8 gamma rays collected over 80 months, Marco Ajello and his colleagues constructed a map of the entire sky at energies ranging from 50 billion (GeV) to 2 trillion electron volts (TeV). For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from about 2 to 3 electron volts. The Fermi team cataloged 360 individual gamma-ray sources, about 75 percent of which are blazars -- distant galaxies sporting jets powered by supermassive black holes. The highest-energy sources, which are all located within our galaxy, are mostly the remnants of supernova explosions and pulsar wind nebulae, places where rapidly rotating neutron stars accelerate particles to near the speed of light. A famous example, the Crab Nebula, tops the list of the highest-energy Fermi sources, producing a steady drizzle of gamma rays exceeding 1 TeV. Astronomers think these very high-energy gamma rays are produced when lower-energy light collides with accelerated particles. This results in a small energy loss for the particle and a big gain for the light, transforming it into a gamma ray. For the first time, Fermi data now extend to energies previously seen only by ground-based detectors. Because ground-based telescopes have much smaller fields of view than the LAT, which scans the whole sky every three hours, they have detected only about a quarter of the objects in the new catalog. This study provides ground facilities with more than 280 new targets for follow-up observations. Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasas-fermi-space-telescope-sharpens-its-high-energy-vision This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=12019 Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

Researchers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have discovered the first gamma-ray pulsar in a galaxy other than our own. The object sets a new record for the most luminous gamma-ray pulsar known. The pulsar lies in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our Milky Way and is located 163,000 light-years away. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest, most active and most complex star-formation region in our galactic neighborhood. It was identified as a bright source of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light, early in the Fermi mission. Astronomers initially attributed this glow to collisions of subatomic particles accelerated in the shock waves produced by supernova . However, the discovery of gamma-ray pulses from a previously known pulsar named PSR J0540-6919 shows that it is responsible for roughly half of the gamma-ray brightness previously thought to come from the nebula. Gamma-ray pulses from J0540-6919 have 20 times the intensity of the previous record-holder, the pulsar in the famous Crab Nebula. Yet they have roughly similar levels of radio, optical and X-ray emission. Accounting for these differences will guide astronomers to a better understanding of the extreme physics at work in young pulsars. Read more at http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasas-fermi-satellite-detects-first-gamma-ray-pulsar-in-another-galaxy This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=12003 Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

Dr. Michelson is the Principal Investigator of the Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Observatory. The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Observatory scans the entire sky once every three hours. It has revealed many types of high-energy sources including gamma-ray bursts, many types of pulsars, active galaxies, and binary systems. In this talk Dr. Michelson will give an overview of Fermi’s discoveries and offer speculation of what might be found next, including possible sources of gravitational radiation.

This visualization shows gamma rays detected during 3C 279's big flare by the LAT instrument on NASA's Fermi satellite. The flare is an abrupt shower of "rain" that trails off toward the end of the movie. Gamma rays are represented as expanding circles reminiscent of raindrops on water. Both the maximum size of the circle and its color represent the energy of the gamma ray, with white lowest and magenta highest. The highest-energy gamma ray the LAT detected during this flare, 52 billion electron volts, arrives near the end. In a second version of the visualization, a background map shows how the LAT detects 3C 279 and other sources by accumulating high-energy photons over time (brighter squares reflect higher numbers of gamma rays). The movie starts on June 14 and ends June 17. The area shown is a region of the sky five degrees on a side and centered on the position of 3C 279. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

This visualization shows gamma rays detected during 3C 279's big flare by the LAT instrument on NASA's Fermi satellite. The flare is an abrupt shower of "rain" that trails off toward the end of the movie. Gamma rays are represented as expanding circles reminiscent of raindrops on water. Both the maximum size of the circle and its color represent the energy of the gamma ray, with white lowest and magenta highest. The highest-energy gamma ray the LAT detected during this flare, 52 billion electron volts, arrives near the end. In a second version of the visualization, a background map shows how the LAT detects 3C 279 and other sources by accumulating high-energy photons over time (brighter squares reflect higher numbers of gamma rays). The movie starts on June 14 and ends June 17. The area shown is a region of the sky five degrees on a side and centered on the position of 3C 279. Five billion years ago, a great disturbance rocked a region near the monster black hole at the center of galaxy 3C 279. On June 14, the pulse of high-energy light produced by this event finally arrived at Earth, setting off detectors aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and other satellites. Astronomers around the world turned instruments toward the galaxy to observe this brief but record-setting flare in greater detail. 3C 279 is a famous blazar, a galaxy whose high-energy activity is powered by a central supermassive black hole weighing up to a billion times the sun's mass and roughly the size of our planetary system. As matter falls toward the black hole, some particles race away at nearly the speed of light along a pair of jets pointed in opposite directions. What makes a blazar so bright is that one of these particle jets happens to be aimed almost straight at us. The brightest persistent source in the gamma-ray sky is the Vela pulsar, which is about 1,000 light-years away. 3C 279 is millions of times farther off, but during this flare it became four times brighter than Vela. This corresponds to a tremendous energy release, and one that cannot be sustained for long. The galaxy rapidly brightened in less than a day, peaked on June 16, and dimmed to normal gamma-ray levels by June 18. The rapid fading is why astronomers rush to collect data as soon as they detect a blazar flare. The Italian Space Agency's AGILE gamma-ray satellite first reported the flare, followed by Fermi. Rapid follow-up observations were made by NASA's Swift satellite and the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL spacecraft, which just happened to be looking in the right direction, along with optical and radio telescopes on the ground. Read more at: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasas-fermi-sees-record-flare-from-a-black-hole-in-a-distant-galaxy This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11947 Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f0004_index.html Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a never-before-seen change in a binary star system in the constellation Sextants. The pulsar ceased its radio 'beacon' but started bright gamma ray emissions. This animation explains the behavior. Credit: NASA/GSFC

Launched in 2008, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has given scientists the ability to explore high-energy processes associated with a number of cosmic phenomena: black holes, solar flares, rapidly spinning neutron stars, & super nova remnants.