Fermi
Design of the telescope
Physical construction
Aperture
Resolution and field of view (with comparisons and sample images)
Energy range of GBM from a few keV to 30 MeV, a largely unexplored part of the EM spectrum
Instruments are Large Area Telescope and the GLAST Burst Monitor
LAT can detect gamma rays and measure direction, energies. It is modular, consisting of a 4 x 4 array of identical 40cm x 40cm towers with more than 1 million silicon-strip detector channels. The GBM is composed of 14 different scintillators mounted on the sides of the spacecraft that can view the entire sky not occulted by Earth.
History of the telescope
Launched June 11, 2008
Mission objectives include to 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 dark matter; explain how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed; help crack the mysteries of gamma ray bursts; answer long-standing questions across about topics such as solar flares, pulsars and the origin of cosmic rays
In orbit, because most gamma rays within its sensitivity range cannot be detected through Earth’s atmosphere
Potential to see known classes of sources to redshifts of 5 or even greater if they exist. Scans the full sky every three hours to monitor for Active Galactic Nuclei flares and is expected to increase the number of AGN gamma ray sources from 70 to thousands as well as the number of gamma-ray pulsars.
Vigorous multidisciplinary guest investigator program to maximize discovery potential (no process to request usage time)
Interesting images, what makes them special
Continues research of EGRET sources, and allows for advances in new particle physics, such as searches of decays of exotic particles in the early universe and postulated annihilations of Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles in the halo of the Milky Way.
Image of the telescope
Other interesting points or facts