This animation reveals a subset of the Large Area Telescope gamma-ray records now available for more than 1,500 things in a brand-new, constantly updated repository. Over 90% of these sources are a type of galaxy called a blazar, powered by the activity of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center/Daniel Kocevski
Cosmic fireworks, undetectable to our eyes, fill the night sky. We can get a glimpse of this elusive light show thanks to the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which observes the sky in gamma rays, the highest-energy type of light.
This animation shows the gamma-ray skys frenzied activity during a year of observations from February 2022 to February 2023. The pulsing circles represent simply a subset of more than 1,500 light curves– records of how sources alter in brightness gradually– gathered by the LAT over almost 15 years in area.
Thanks to the work of a global group of astronomers, this information is now publicly available in a continually updated interactive library. A paper about the repository was published on March 15, 2023, in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
” We were inspired to put this database together by astronomers who study galaxies and wanted to compare visible and gamma-ray light curves over very long time scales,” stated Daniel Kocevski, a repository co-author and an astrophysicist at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “We were getting requests to process one things at a time. Now the scientific community has access to all the analyzed data for the entire brochure.”
View a cosmic gamma-ray fireworks show in this animation using simply a year of data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The animation reveals a subset of the LAT gamma-ray records now readily available for more than 1,500 objects in a new, constantly upgraded repository. Credit: NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center/Daniel Kocevski
Over 90% of the sources in the dataset are blazars, central areas of galaxies hosting active supermassive great voids that produce powerful particle jets pointed practically straight at Earth. Ground-based observatories, like the National Science Foundations IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, can sometimes identify high-energy particles produced in these jets. Blazars are necessary sources for multimessenger astronomy, where scientists use mixes of light, particles, and space-time ripples to study the cosmos.
” In 2018, astronomers revealed a candidate joint detection of gamma rays and a high-energy particle called a neutrino from a blazar for the very first time, thanks to Fermi LAT and IceCube,” stated co-author Michela Negro, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Having the historical light curve database might lead to new multimessenger insights into past occasions.”
Each items magenta circle grows as it brightens and shrinks as it dims. The reddish-orange band running throughout the middle of the sky is the main aircraft of our Milky Way galaxy, a consistent gamma-ray producer. The yellow circle reveals the Suns evident annual trajectory across the sky.
Processing the complete catalog required about 3 months, or more than 400 computer years of processing time dispersed over 1,000 nodes on a computer system cluster situated at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California.
The LAT, Fermis main instrument, scans the entire sky every three hours. It spots gamma rays with energies varying from 20 million to over 300 billion electron volts. For contrast, the energy of noticeable light mostly falls between 2 to 3 electron volts.
Reference: “The Fermi-LAT Lightcurve Repository” by S. Abdollahi, M. Ajello, L. Baldini, J. Ballet, D. Bastieri, J. Becerra Gonzalez, R. Bellazzini, A. Berretta, E. Bissaldi, R. Bonino, A. Brill, P. Bruel, E. Burns, S. Buson, R. A. Cameron, R. Caputo, P. A. Caraveo, N. Cibrario, S. Ciprini, P. Cristarella Orestano, M. Crnogorcevic, S. Cutini, F. DAmmando, S. De Gaetano, S. W. Digel, N. Di Lalla, L. Di Venere, A. Domínguez, V. Fallah Ramazani, S. J. Fegan, E. C. Ferrara, A. Fiori, H. Fleischhack, A. Franckowiak, Y. Fukazawa, P. Fusco, V. Gammaldi, F. Gargano, S. Garrappa, C. Gasbarra, D. Gasparrini, N. Giglietto, F. Giordano, M. Giroletti, D. Green, I. A. Grenier, S. Guiriec, M. Gustafsson, E. Hays, D. Horan, X. Hou, G. Jóhannesson, M. Kerr, D. Kocevski, M. Kuss, L. Latronico, J. Li, I. Liodakis, F. Longo, F. Loparco, L. Lorusso, B. Lott, M. N. Lovellette, P. Lubrano, S. Maldera, A. Manfreda, G. Martí-Devesa, M. N. Mazziotta, I. Mereu, M. Meyer, P. F. Michelson, T. Mizuno, M. E. Monzani, A. Morselli, I. V. Moskalenko, M. Negro, N. Omodei, E. Orlando, J. F. Ormes, D. Paneque, G. Panzarini, J. S. Perkins, M. Persic, M. Pesce-Rollins, R. Pillera, T. A. Porter, G. Principe, J. L. Racusin, S. Rainò, R. Rando, B. Rani, M. Razzano, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, O. Reimer, M. Sánchez-Conde, P. M. Saz Parkinson, Jeff Scargle, L. Scotton, D. Serini, C. Sgrò, E. J. Siskind, G. Spandre, P. Spinelli, D. J. Suson, H. Tajima, D. J. Thompson, D. F. Torres, J. Valverde, T. Venters, Z. Wadiasingh, S. Wagner and K. Wood, 15 March 2023, The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.DOI: 10.3847/ 1538-4365/ acbb6a.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by Goddard. Fermi was established in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from scholastic organizations and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.
This animation reveals a subset of the Large Area Telescope gamma-ray records now readily available for more than 1,500 items in a brand-new, continually upgraded repository.” We were motivated to put this database together by astronomers who study galaxies and wanted to compare gamma-ray and visible light curves over long time scales,” stated Daniel Kocevski, a repository co-author and an astrophysicist at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Enjoy a cosmic gamma-ray fireworks reveal in this animation using just a year of information from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The animation reveals a subset of the LAT gamma-ray records now available for more than 1,500 things in a new, constantly updated repository. The reddish-orange band running throughout the middle of the sky is the main plane of our Milky Way galaxy, a constant gamma-ray manufacturer.