Explore the Mysteries of Gamma-Ray Astronomy with NASA's GLAST Mission

[marcus]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/main/index.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080611143818.htm

11 June launch went smoothly, as far as I can tell.
Anybody hear further news?

This page has some tutorials about why gammaray astronomy is especially interesting
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080611143818.htm
here is an example of one of them
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/blazers.html
which is about the jets sent out (by a mechanism not fully understood) from the supermassive black holes at the center of some galaxies
here is another of their tutorials, about gammaray bursts (GRBs)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/gammay_ray_bursts.html

 

[chemisttree]

Wow! Nine strap on booster rockets. That is one heavy instrument! http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/on_demand_video.html?param=http://anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net/anon.nasa-global/ksc/ksc_061108_glast_launch1.asx&_id=128415&_title=GLAST%20Launches%20Into%20Space&_tnimage=244704main_ksc_061108_glast_launch-t.gif"

 

[blimkie.k]

From the article
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/blazers.html

"Even more amazing, radio, optical, and X-ray telescopes have resolved jets shooting away from galactic cores in opposite directions. The material in these jets can rip across space at more than 99% the speed of light, and some jets remain tightly collimated for hundreds of thousands of light-years. When a jet points almost directly toward Earth, the material can appear to be moving faster than the speed of light. This superluminal motion is an illusion caused by the geometry of a source moving at high speed that is nearly but not perfectly head-on. But despite the staggering scale and speed of these jets, astronomers haven't been able to answer the most basic questions about them, such as how matter is accelerated to within a whisker of the speed of light. "We don’t know what the jets are made of or how they are produced. It is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of astrophysics. But jets are the link between the activity of the supermassive black hole and the AGN's surrounding environment in intergalactic space," says Peter Michelson of Stanford University in California, who is the Principal Investigator of GLAST's primary science instrument: the Large Area Telescope (LAT). "


I hope GLAST can provide us with some further knowledge of the jets accelerated out of the a suppermassive black hole. I am quite interested to learn what the matter coming out is and how it achieves such a great velocity. Does anyone have any ideas about it?

 

[Haelfix]

We'll start getting the big results in about a year's time. Very exciting, I can't wait.

 

[Chronos]

Agreed, GLAST is the bomb. I too can't wait. I anticipate more mysteries than answers.