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NASA Images Show Gamma Ray Bursts Across Milky Way
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
NASA researchers yesterday released images collected by a new telescope studying high-energy gamma rays. A combined image from 95 hours of the telescope's initial observations showed bursts of gamma rays glowing across the plane of the Milky Way.
The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, renamed Fermi, was launched in June and is off to a promising start, NASA scientists said. "I like to call it our extreme machine," said Jon Morse, the director of astrophysics for NASA. "It will help us crack the mysteries of these enormously powerful emissions."
Gamma rays are powerful light rays invisible to the naked eye. Because Earth's atmosphere absorbs gamma rays, they can be studied only from the edges of the visible universe. Fermi is gathering data on gamma rays that originate near black holes and high-energy stars called pulsars.
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