Animation of the Northern Hemisphere Shows Gamma Ray Sources of Greater Than 300 Million Electron Volts Taken by the Fermi LAT

The mission of the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope is to monitor: "...gamma-ray radiation, the most energetic form of radiation, billions of times more energetic than the type of light visible to our eyes. What is happening to produce this much energy? What happens to the surrounding environment near these phenomena? How will studying these energetic objects add to our understanding of the very nature of the Universe and how it behaves?"

According to Wired Science Blog: "The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has been orbiting Earth and scanning the sky for high-energy gamma ray photons since last summer, and its first 87 days of observations are now combined into less than four minutes in this time-lapse video."

The Official Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope under the auspices of the Goddard Space Flight Center further explains the mission of Fermi by elaborating that: "With Fermi, astronomers will at long last have a superior tool to study how black holes, notorious for pulling matter in, can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds. Physicists will be able to study subatomic particles at energies far greater than those seen in ground-based particle accelerators. And cosmologists will gain valuable information about the birth and early evolution of the Universe."

Goddard provides further background information: "For this unique endeavor, one that brings together the astrophysics and particle physics communities, NASA is teaming up with the U.S. Department of Energy and institutions in France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Sweden. General Dynamics was chosen to build the spacecraft. Fermi was launched June 11, 2008 at 12:05 pm EDT."

"Mission Objectives

* Explore the most extreme environments in the Universe, where nature harnesses energies far beyond anything possible on Earth.
* Search for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious Dark Matter.
* Explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed.
* Help crack the mysteries of the stupendously powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.
* Answer long-standing questions across a broad range of topics, including solar flares, pulsars and the origin of cosmic rays."

The sky's background is blue in color and the flashes of red circular patterns represent gamma-ray sources.

“The movie shows counts of gamma rays seen by Fermi’s LAT, and each frame shows the gamma rays collected in one day,” said presenter Elizabeth Hays, an astrophysicist on the Fermi team. Only gamma rays with energies greater than 300 million electron volts -- or 150 million times more than that of visible light -- are shown. Brighter colors indicate greater numbers of detected gamma rays and thus the locations of bright gamma-ray sources"

The photo below shows Enrico Fermi