6 years of observing gamma-radiation sources in the Universe: video from NASA

There are many sources of gamma radiation in the universe. This exploding stars, and the centers of galaxies, and pulsars, and more. Observing gamma radiation helps clarify the nature of some objects, as well as the principles of their functioning and evolution. While a person cannot directly observe gamma radiation, various kinds of devices help him with this.

One of the most famous and powerful tools is the Fermi space gamma telescope. This is a space observatory in low earth orbit designed to observe large areas of space in the gamma-ray range. With its help, astronomers investigate astrophysical and cosmological processes occurring in active galactic nuclei, pulsars and other high-energy sources; they study gamma-ray bursts, they search for dark matter.

The system consists of two main elements. The LAT - gamma telescope is designed for observations in the energy range from several tens of MeV to hundreds of GeV. The sensitivity at 100 MeV energy is 50 times higher than that of its predecessor, the EGRET Compton Observatory. In this case, LAT will receive much sharper images and better determine the coordinates of the sources.
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Fermi GBM - a device for recording gamma-ray bursts. He is expected to record about 200 events per year. This is not much, but the task of simply increasing the number of known bursts is not posed before it. It is more interesting to understand in detail how gamma-ray bursts shine in the hard gamma range, on energies of the order of GeV. The Compton Observatory saw several very hard bursts, but there were more questions left than answers.



NASA collected telescope data for 6 years, and created a video showing the main sources of gamma radiation in the universe. As it turned out, the main sources are blazars , small elliptical galaxies, inside of which are supermassive black holes. Other elements are visible. For example, this is the remnant of the supernova Gamma Cygni, the Crab Nebula, or two huge stars in Eta Carina . Naturally, it was not done without the numerous pulsars already cataloged, plus elements that have yet to be cataloged.

The energy of these objects ranges from 50 billion to 2 trillion volts. Our eye is able to perceive optical radiation with an energy of 2-3 electron volts, for comparison. Observing the sources of this energy allows at least a little understanding of what is happening in remote regions of our Universe, where conditions reign that are difficult to even imagine.