Starting on 2013 December 5, Fermi will implement a modified observing strategy. While continuing to conduct a full sky survey, regular pointed observations will also be incorporated that will significantly increase exposure times for regions around the Galactic center. This new observing strategy will be initially implemented for a period of one year. Information on the strategy and its benefits can be found here.
On April 27, a blast of light from a dying star in a distant galaxy became the focus of astronomers around the world. The explosion, known as a gamma-ray burst and designated GRB 130427A, tops the charts as one of the brightest ever seen.
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The call for proposals to participate in the Fermi Cycle-7 Guest Investigator Program has been issued by NASA Headquarters as an amendment to the 2013 ROSES NRA. For additional details and instructions on how to propose please refer to the Proposals page of the FSSC web site and to the NRA itself which is hosted by the NSPIRES web facility. We strongly encourage prospective proposers to review these documents as there are several changes to the program relative to past mission cycles.
The FSSC has released a new version of the pass 7 data that has been reprocessed (P7REP). The updated instrument calibrations used to produce the P7REP data improve the LAT PSF above 3 GeV and provide a new on-orbit PSF for P7REP data. The updated LAT data can be downloaded from the LAT LAT Data Server at the FSSC website. A description of the updates and links to new analysis products is available at the P7REP Usage page.
The FSSC is pleased to announce the availability of a new version of the Fermi Science Tools, developed jointly with the Large Area Telescope Collaboration and Gamma-ray Burst Monitor Team. This release includes upgrades and bug fixes for the tools detailed in the release notes along with a new set of tools to analyze moving targets in the Fermi LAT data. The tools can be downloaded at http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/data/analysis/software/. The science tools are being released in preparation for the reprocessed pass 7 data. We anticipate the reprocessed data will be available in early November.
During its five-year primary mission, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has given astronomers an increasingly detailed portrait of the universe's most extraordinary phenomena, from giant black holes in the hearts of distant galaxies to thunderstorms on Earth.
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This week marks the five year anniversary of the beginning of Fermi science operations. On August 11, 2008, the Fermi mission was officially declared ready for science, and our journey began. Now, after five years of trouble-free operation, the observatory is beginning its extended mission. The Fermi Project, Mission Operations Team, and Science Support Center gratefully thank the science community for helping to make the Fermi mission such a success. We look forward to many more years of innovative results from this exceptional observatory.
The Proceedings of the 4th Fermi Symposium are now available! All submitted papers are complied into proceedings here, as well as being available on arXiv. Thanks to everyone who participated in making the 4th Fermi Symposium such a success!
Phase-2 (budget) proposals for the Fermi Cycle-6 GI Program are due on June 24, 2013. If you have been invited to submit a phase-2 proposal, please refer to the instructions on the Proposals web page for submission details.
A minor data processing error affecting the GBM "CTIME" and "CSPEC" data types was recently identified. This problem was fixed in the processing pipeline on May 16, 2013. The data for the very bright event GRB 130427324 were reprocessed and redelivered on May 16 2013. For all other CTIME and CSPEC data prior to that date, the effect of the incorrect exposure on true count rates calculated from this exposure is expected to be negligible.
A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world. The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, and designated GRB 130427A, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.
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NASA scientists don't often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email on March 29, 2012, she found herself facing this precise situation.
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NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits our planet every 95 minutes, building up increasingly deeper views of the universe with every circuit. Its wide-eyed Large Area Telescope (LAT) sweeps across the entire sky every three hours, capturing the highest-energy form of light -- gamma rays -- from sources across the universe. These range from supermassive black holes billions of light-years away to intriguing objects in our own galaxy, such as X-ray binaries, supernova remnants and pulsars.
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A new study using observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the first clear-cut evidence the expanding debris of exploded stars produces some of the fastest-moving matter in the universe. This discovery is a major step toward understanding the origin of cosmic rays, one of the Fermi mission's primary goals.
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The Fermi project is happy to announce the opening of registration for the 2013 Fermi Summer School, which will run from May 28 through June 7 2013. In addition to comprehensive coverage of gamma-ray astrophysics topics, this year's program will include a special emphasis on searches for dark matter and new physics.
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The Fermi project and the Fermi Users Group are considering the possible future implementation of alternative observing strategies that might more effectively facilitate specific science objectives such a desire for increased sensitivity to flaring sources in the northern hemisphere, or monitoring sources near the galactic center. These are only a few among many possibilities and community input is sought. Please refer to the Alternative Observing Strategies web page for more information.
The Fermi Science Support center is pleased to announce a new resource which is a compilation of flares derived from LAT aperture photometry light curves. A flare-search algorithm searches for four standard deviation increases in the count rate in all of the 2FGL sources whenever the light curves are updated (nominally on a one-week timescale). Any sources found to be in a flaring state will be shown on a special page. Please be advised that of the caveats associated with the aperture photometry analysis also pertain to the flaring sources analysis.
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In 2011, a months-long blast of energy launched by an enormous black hole almost 11 billion years ago swept past Earth. Using a combination of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), the world's largest radio telescope, astronomers have zeroed in on the source of this ancient outburst.
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The deadline for proposals to participate in the Fermi Cycle-6 Guest Investigator program is January 18, 2013 at 4:30 PM EST. Proposals should be submitted through the ARK/RPS remote proposal submission system. Further details are available in the Fermi Amendment to the 2012 ROSES NRA, and in the "Proposals" web page.