Fermi Stories
![Image of the Fermi e-book cover](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/febookcovfinal.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
Explore the Universe with the First E-Book from NASA’s Fermi
To commemorate a milestone anniversary for NASA’s Fermi spacecraft, the mission team has published an e-book called “Our High-Energy Universe: 15 Years with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.” Readers can download the e-book in PDF and EPUB formats. The e-book…
![The Pinwheel galaxy (M101) as imaged by the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, with SN 2023ixf circled.](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/flwo-m101-sn2023ixf.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
NASA’s Fermi Mission Sees No Gamma Rays from Nearby Supernova
A nearby supernova in 2023 offered astrophysicists an excellent opportunity to test ideas about how these types of explosions boost particles, called cosmic rays, to near light-speed. But surprisingly, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected none of the high-energy gamma-ray…
![](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/grb-afterglow-4k-30fps-prores.00150-print.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
How NASA Chases and Investigates Bright Cosmic Blips
Stephen Lesage’s phone started vibrating just after halftime on Oct. 9, 2022, while he was watching a soccer game in Atlanta with a friend. When Lesage saw the incoming messages, the match no longer seemed important. There had been a…
![Artist's concept of gamma ray sky with dipole marked in magenta](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/fermi-dipole-artist-concept.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
NASA’s Fermi Detects Surprise Gamma-Ray Feature Beyond Our Galaxy
Astronomers analyzing 13 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found an unexpected and as yet unexplained feature outside of our galaxy. “It is a completely serendipitous discovery,” said Alexander Kashlinsky, a cosmologist at the University of…
![Thumbnail for gamma-ray time-lapse](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/grtl-square.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
NASA’s Fermi Mission Creates 14-Year Time-Lapse of the Gamma-Ray Sky
The cosmos comes alive in an all-sky time-lapse movie made from 14 years of data acquired by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Our Sun, occasionally flaring into prominence, serenely traces a path through the sky against the backdrop of high-energy…
![A binary system containing a pulsar that sometimes disrupts the stream coming from its companion star, which changes the type of emission it produces.](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/transitional-pulsar-art.gif?w=4096&format=png)
NASA’s Fermi Mission Nets 300 Gamma-Ray Pulsars … and Counting
A new catalog produced by a French-led international team of astronomers shows that NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered 294 gamma-ray-emitting pulsars, while another 34 suspects await confirmation. This is 27 times the number known before the mission launched…
![Two neutron stars begin to merge in this artist’s concept, blasting jets of high-speed particles. Collision events like this one create short gamma-ray bursts. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ A. Simonnet, Sonoma State University](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/grb211211apt.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
Gamma-ray Bursts: Harvesting Knowledge From the Universe’s Most Powerful Explosions
The most powerful events in the known universe – gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) – are short-lived outbursts of the highest-energy light. They can erupt with a quintillion (a 10 followed by 18 zeros) times the luminosity of our Sun. Now thought…
![](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/webb-stsci-01hawergs3j80eb4nmeff4s3t3.png?w=4096&format=png)
NASA’s Webb Makes First Detection of Heavy Element From Star Merger
Webb’s study of the second-brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen reveals tellurium. A team of scientists has used multiple space and ground-based telescopes, including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, to…
![This image depicts a gamma-ray burst caused by the merger of two neutron stars. The merger creates gravitational waves (shown as pale arcs rippling outward) being created following the merger of two neutron stars, a near-light-speed jet that produced gamma rays (shown as brown cones and a rapidly traveling magenta glow erupting from the center of the collision), and a donut-shaped ring of expanding blue debris around the center of the explosion. A variety of colors represent the wavelengths of light produced by the kilonova, creating violet to blue-white to red bursts above and below the collision.](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Neutron_Star_Merger.jpeg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
Gamma-Ray Bursts: Black Hole Birth Announcements
Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest, most violent explosions in the universe, but they can be surprisingly tricky to detect. Our eyes can’t see them because they are tuned to just a limited portion of the types of light that exist,…
![](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/grb-wfc3ir-mstr-crop-final-circled-2160.jpg?w=4096&format=jpeg)
NASA Looks Back at 50 Years of Gamma-Ray Burst Science
Fifty years ago, on June 1, 1973, astronomers around the world were introduced to a powerful and perplexing new phenomenon called GRBs (gamma-ray bursts). Today sensors on orbiting satellites like NASA’s Swift and Fermi missions detect a GRB somewhere in…