Yesterday, NASA released the first set of images from its newest space telescope, the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, which has now been renamed Fermi in honor of the particle physicist Enrico Fermi. After less than three months of collecting data, the Fermi telescope produced a map of the sky showing the sources of powerful gamma rays as bright spots of light.
"I like to call it our extreme machine," said Jon Morse, the director of astrophysics for NASA. "It will help us crack the mysteries of these enormously powerful emissions." Gamma rays are powerful light rays invisible to the naked eye [Washington Post].
As the Earth's atmosphere absorbs gamma rays, they can only be studied from an orbiting telescope. The $700 million telescope will observe gamma rays emitted by black holes, neutron stars, and other cosmic eccentrics, and will also scan the skies for the mysterious gamma ray bursts ...
