Fermi tagged posts

Breakthrough discovery puts astronomers one step closer to solving the mystery of the origin of elements that are heavier than iron. An international team of astronomers — including Clemson University astrophysicist Dieter Hartmann — obtained observational evidence for the creation of rare heavy elements in the aftermath of a cataclysmic explosion triggered by the merger of two neutron stars.

The massive explosion unleashed a gamma-ray burst, GRB230307A, the second brightest in 50 years of observations and about 1,000 times brighter than a typical gamma-ray burst. GRB230307A was first detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope on March 7, 2023.

Using multiple space- and ground-based telescopes, in...

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in conjunction with the international Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration, announce the discovery of nearly 300 gamma ray pulsars in the publication of their Third Catalog of Gamma Ray Pulsars. This milestone comes 15 years since the launch of Fermi in 2008, when there were fewer than ten known gamma-ray pulsars.

“Work on this important catalog has been going on in our group for years,” said Paul Ray, Ph.D., head of the High Energy Astrophysics and Applications Section at NRL.

“Our scientists and postdocs have been able to both discover and analyze the timing behavior and spectra of many of these newfound pulsars as part of our quest to further our understanding of these exotic stars that we are able to use as cosmic clocks.”

Pul...

Scientists have discovered the first gamma-ray eclipses from a special type of binary star system using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. These so-called spider systems each contain a pulsar—the superdense, rapidly rotating remains of a star that exploded in a supernova—that slowly erodes its companion.

An international team of scientists scoured over a decade of Fermi observations to find seven sp...

Astronomers found a pulsar hurtling through space at nearly 2...