GLAST Observatory reveals entire gamma-ray sky
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 13:56
in Astronomy & Space
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA announced today that the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) has revealed its first all-sky map in gamma rays. The onboard Large Area Telescope's (LAT) all-sky image—which shows the glowing gas of the Milky Way, blinking pulsars and a flaring galaxy billions of light-years away—was created using only 95 hours of "first light" observations, compared with past missions which took years to produce a similar image. Scientists expect the telescope will discover many new pulsars in our own galaxy, reveal powerful processes near super-massive black holes at the cores of thousands of active galaxies and enable a search for signs of new physical laws.