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Credit & Copyright: NASA, DOE, Fermi LAT Collaboration;
Text:
Barb Mattson
(U. Maryland,
NASA's
GSFC)
Explanation:
Forget
X-ray vision Á imagine what you could see with
gamma-ray vision!
The
featured all-sky map
shows what the universe looks like to NASA's
Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
Fermi sees light with energies about a
billion times what the human eye can see, and
the map
combines 12 years of Fermi observations.
The colors represent the brightness of the
gamma-ray sources,
with brighter sources appearing lighter in color.
The prominent stripe across the middle is the central plane of our
Milky Way galaxy.
Most of the red and yellow dots scattered above
and below the Milky WayÁs plane are very
distant galaxies, while most of those within
the plane are nearby
pulsars.
The blue background that fills the image is the
diffuse glow of gamma-rays from distant sources
that are too dim to be detected individually.
Some gamma-ray sources remain unidentified and topics of research Á currently
no one knows what they are.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: gamma ray
Publications with words: gamma ray
See also: