Blazar B0218+357 Allows For A Gamma-Ray Study Of A Gravitational Lens
Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - 10:20
in Astronomy & Space
Astronomers using NASA's Fermi observatory have made the first-ever gamma-ray measurements of a gravitational lens, thanks to B0218+357, located 4.35 billion light-years from Earth in the direction of a constellation Triangulum. It's not really what it was designed to do. While radio and optical telescopes can resolve and monitor individual blazar images, Fermi's LAT cannot. Instead, the Fermi team exploited a "delayed playback" effect, which opens new avenues for research, including a novel way to probe emission regions near supermassive black holes. It may even be possible to find other gravitational lenses with data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. read more