NASA Gamma ray map of the galaxy completed by NASA

[Coin]

Very cool image.

NASA researchers yesterday released images collected by a new telescope studying high-energy gamma rays. A combined image from 95 hours of the telescope's initial observations showed bursts of gamma rays glowing across the plane of the Milky Way.

The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, renamed Fermi, was launched in June and is off to a promising start, NASA scientists said.

Does anyone know, is anything in the information we got from this so far at all surprising? Is it likely we will learn anything about gamma ray bursts from this or is more information

 

[blimkie.k]

Very cool indeed, I've been waiting to hear more about GLAST or Fermi as it is now called. Here is another link from SCIAM is anyone is interested.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=glast-telescope-first-light

To me that's not that supirsing because it resembles artists conceptions of the disklike nature our galaxy however the image it generated is quite interesting. I would have expected to see a higher concentration of energy at the milky way centre considering many believe there to be a massive black hole at the centre. I am wondering if Fermi will help astronomers further proove or disproove this theory or even present new theories.
Im interested in more information on Fermi and this subject if anyone has some good links besides NASA page because I've allreayd been there. What exactly are the long term goals of this project, if any?

Here is another article from SCIAM relating to the galactic black hole.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-stars-formed-near-black-hole

 

[neutralseer]

Hi blimkie.k,
Yeah, this is fascinating interesting stuff. I have a comment on this quote.

Im wondering if Fermi will help astronomers further proove or disproove this theory or even present new theories.
Im interested in more information on Fermi and this subject if anyone has some good links besides NASA page because I've allreayd been there. What exactly are the long term goals of this project, if any?

We haven't proven the existence of a super-massive black hole's (SMBH) anywhere yet, however, we have excellent evidence that there is a SMBH at the center of our galaxy. Mainly, we've been observing stars orbiting the SMBH for years that have orbits roughly the diameter of our solar system. Through an elementary analysis of their orbits we know that there is either a point mass or spherical mass that is millions of times the mass of our own sun which can only be a BH. If it's not a BH it's a very very very dense state of exotic matter that is completely unexplainable by physics (it would pretty exciting if that were the case, but unlikely).

Fermi won't be proving or disproving the existence of an SMBH in the center of our galaxy, it would just help us understand further the nature of the our SMBH's accretion disk and jets (both of which are much weaker than AGN's or quasars).

 

[aryan_605]

hey mate..
i just registered for this website.
i'm just an undergraduate pre-med student, and I'm still learning stuff.
so thanks for all the information..
i love physics and calculus, specially astrophysics.
but may be u could find something on this website
www.sciencedaily.com

they post new discoveries and stuff everyday...on all kind of stuff
so u might want to go check it out..i have it as my home page.

 

[Astronuc]

Update:

NASA's Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/new-structure.html

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy.

"What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center," said Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who first recognized the feature. "We don't fully understand their nature or origin."

The structure spans more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus, and it may be millions of years old. A paper about the findings has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
. . . .
Other astronomers studying gamma rays hadn't detected the bubbles partly because of a fog of gamma rays that appears throughout the sky. The fog happens when particles moving near the speed of light interact with light and interstellar gas in the Milky Way. The LAT team constantly refines models to uncover new gamma-ray sources obscured by this so-called diffuse emission. By using various estimates of the fog, Finkbeiner and his colleagues were able to isolate it from the LAT data and unveil the giant bubbles.
. . . .

Gamma ray energies are in the 1 to several hundred GeV range.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/498886main_DF4_bubbles_graphs.jpg

What to make of this?