NASA’s Fermi Finds New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet Seen
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NASA’s Fermi Finds New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet SeenIn October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT — the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a feature never seen before.
The brightest gamma-ray burst yet recorded gave scientists a new high-energy feature to study. Learn what NASA’s Fermi mission saw, and what this feature may be telling us about the burst’s light-speed jets. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio“A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention,” said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and affiliated with Brera Observatory, part of INAF (the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics) in Merate, Italy. “When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs.”
A paper about the discovery appears in the July 26 edition of the journal Science.
When matter interacts with light, the energy can be absorbed and reemitted in characteristic ways. These interactions can brighten or dim particular colors (or energies), producing key features visible when the light is spread out, rainbow-like, in a spectrum. These features can reveal a wealth of information, such as the chemical elements involved in the interaction. At higher energies, spectral features can uncover specific particle processes, such as matter and antimatter annihilating to produce gamma rays.
“While some previous studies have reported possible evidence for absorption and emission features in other GRBs, subsequent scrutiny revealed that all of these could just be statistical fluctuations. What we see in the BOAT is different,” said coauthor Om Sharan Salafia at INAF-Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy. “We’ve determined that the odds this feature is just a noise fluctuation are less than one chance in half a billion.”
A jet of particles moving at nearly light speed emerges from a massive star in this artist’s concept. The star’s core ran out of fuel and collapsed into a black hole. Some of the matter swirling toward the black hole was redirected into dual jets firing in opposite directions. We see a gamma-ray burst when one of these jets happens to point directly at Earth. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the cosmos and emit copious amounts of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. The most common type occurs when the core of a massive star exhausts its fuel, collapses, and forms a rapidly spinning black hole. Matter falling into the black hole powers oppositely directed particle jets that blast through the star’s outer layers at nearly the speed of light. We detect GRBs when one of these jets points almost directly toward Earth.
The BOAT, formally known as GRB 221009A, erupted Oct. 9, 2022, and promptly saturated most of the gamma-ray detectors in orbit, including those on Fermi. This prevented them from measuring the most intense part of the blast. Reconstructed observations, coupled with statistical arguments, suggest the BOAT, if part of the same population as previously detected GRBs, was likely the brightest burst to appear in Earth’s skies in 10,000 years.
The putative emission line appears almost 5 minutes after the burst was detected and well after it had dimmed enough to end saturation effects for Fermi. The line persisted for at least 40 seconds, and the emission reached a peak energy of about 12 MeV (million electron volts). For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from 2 to 3 electron volts.
So what produced this spectral feature? The team thinks the most likely source is the annihilation of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.
“When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate, producing a pair of gamma rays with an energy of 0.511 MeV,” said coauthor Gor Oganesyan at Gran Sasso Science Institute and Gran Sasso National Laboratory in L’Aquila, Italy. “Because we’re looking into the jet, where matter is moving at near light speed, this emission becomes greatly blueshifted and pushed toward much higher energies.”
If this interpretation is correct, to produce an emission line peaking at 12 MeV, the annihilating particles had to have been moving toward us at about 99.9% the speed of light.
“After decades of studying these incredible cosmic explosions, we still don’t understand the details of how these jets work,” noted Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists investigate this extreme environment more deeply.”
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by Goddard. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
- Black Holes
- Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
- Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes
- Gamma Rays
- Gamma-Ray Bursts
- Goddard Space Flight Center
- Marshall Space Flight Center
- Stellar-mass Black Holes
- The Universe
We may finally know what caused the biggest cosmic explosion ever seen
Mars rover found a rock with possible signs of ancient life
A mega–electron volt emission line in the spectrum of a gamma-ray burst
This glowing speck is a freezing exoplanet six times the size of Jupiter
Nature, Published online: 24 July 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02440-3
One of the closest extrasolar planets to our Solar System is the most frigid ever to be directly imaged.NASA’s Webb Images Cold Exoplanet 12 Light-Years Away
An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged an exoplanet roughly 12 light-years from Earth. The planet, Epsilon Indi Ab, is one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date.
The planet is several times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the K-type star Epsilon Indi A (Eps Ind A), which is around the age of our Sun, but slightly cooler. The team observed Epsilon Indi Ab using the coronagraph on Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Only a few tens of exoplanets have been directly imaged previously by space- and ground-based observatories.
Image A: Exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab This image of the gas-giant exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab was taken with the coronagraph on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). A star symbol marks the location of the host star Epsilon Indi A, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph, resulting in the dark circle marked with a dashed white line. Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest exoplanets ever directly imaged. Light at 10.6 microns was assigned the color blue, while light at 15.5 microns was assigned the color orange. MIRI did not resolve the planet, which is a point source.
“Our prior observations of this system have been more indirect measurements of the star, which actually allowed us to see ahead of time that there was likely a giant planet in this system tugging on the star,” said team member Caroline Morley of the University of Texas at Austin. “That’s why our team chose this system to observe first with Webb.”
“This discovery is exciting because the planet is quite similar to Jupiter — it is a little warmer and is more massive, but is more similar to Jupiter than any other planet that has been imaged so far,” added lead author Elisabeth Matthews of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
Previously imaged exoplanets tend to be the youngest, hottest exoplanets that are still radiating much of the energy from when they first formed. As planets cool and contract over their lifetime, they become significantly fainter and therefore harder to image.
A Solar System Analog“Cold planets are very faint, and most of their emission is in the mid-infrared,” explained Matthews. “Webb is ideally suited to conduct mid-infrared imaging, which is extremely hard to do from the ground. We also needed good spatial resolution to separate the planet and the star in our images, and the large Webb mirror is extremely helpful in this aspect.”
Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest exoplanets to be directly detected, with an estimated temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) — colder than any other imaged planet beyond our solar system, and colder than all but one free-floating brown dwarf. The planet is only around 180 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) warmer than gas giants in our solar system. This provides a rare opportunity for astronomers to study the atmospheric composition of true solar system analogs.
“Astronomers have been imagining planets in this system for decades; fictional planets orbiting Epsilon Indi have been the sites of Star Trek episodes, novels, and video games like Halo,” added Morley. “It’s exciting to actually see a planet there ourselves, and begin to measure its properties.”
Not Quite As PredictedEpsilon Indi Ab is the twelfth closest exoplanet to Earth known to date and the closest planet more massive than Jupiter. The science team chose to study Eps Ind A because the system showed hints of a possible planetary body using a technique called radial velocity, which measures the back-and-forth wobbles of the host star along our line of sight.
“While we expected to image a planet in this system, because there were radial velocity indications of its presence, the planet we found isn’t what we had predicted,” shared Matthews. “It’s about twice as massive, a little farther from its star, and has a different orbit than we expected. The cause of this discrepancy remains an open question. The atmosphere of the planet also appears to be a little different than the model predictions. So far we only have a few photometric measurements of the atmosphere, meaning that it is hard to draw conclusions, but the planet is fainter than expected at shorter wavelengths.”
The team believes this may mean there is significant methane, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere that are absorbing the shorter wavelengths of light. It might also suggest a very cloudy atmosphere.
The direct imaging of exoplanets is particularly valuable for characterization. Scientists can directly collect light from the observed planet and compare its brightness at different wavelengths. So far, the science team has only detected Epsilon Indi Ab at a few wavelengths, but they hope to revisit the planet with Webb to conduct both photometric and spectroscopic observations in the future. They also hope to detect other similar planets with Webb to find possible trends about their atmospheres and how these objects form.
NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will use a coronagraph to demonstrate direct imaging technology by photographing Jupiter-like worlds orbiting Sun-like stars – something that has never been done before. These results will pave the way for future missions to study worlds that are even more Earth-like.
These results were taken with Webb’s Cycle 1 General Observer program 2243 and have been published in the journal Nature.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Media ContactsLaura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu , Hannah Braun hbraun@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Animation: Eclipse/Coronagraph Animation
Webb Blog: NASA’s Webb Takes Its First-Ever Direct Image of Distant World
Webb Blog: How Webb’s Coronagraphs Reveal Exoplanets in the Infrared
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Related For Kids En EspañolPara Niños : Qué es una exoplaneta?
Keep Exploring Related Topics James Webb Space Telescope Share Details Last Updated Jul 24, 2024 EditorStephen SabiaContactLaura Betzlaura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related TermsLunar samples reveal exactly when the moon’s largest crater formed
25 Years On, Chandra Highlights Legacy of NASA Engineering Ingenuity
By Rick Smith
“The art of aerospace engineering is a matter of seeing around corners,” said NASA thermal analyst Jodi Turk. In the case of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, marking its 25th anniversary in space this year, some of those corners proved to be as far as 80,000 miles away and a quarter-century in the future.
Turk is part of a dedicated team of engineers, designers, test technicians, and analysts at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Together with partners outside and across the agency, including the Chandra Operations Control Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, they keep the spacecraft flying, enabling Chandra’s ongoing studies of black holes, supernovae, dark matter, and more – and deepening our understanding of the origin and evolution of the cosmos.
Engineers in the X-ray Calibration Facility – now the world-class X-ray & Cryogenic Facility – at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, integrate the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s High Resolution Camera with the mirror assembly inside a 24-foot-diameter vacuum chamber, in this photo taken March 16, 1997. Chandra was launched July 23, 1999, aboard space shuttle Columbia.NASA
“Everything Chandra has shown us over the last 25 years – the formation of galaxies and super star clusters, the behavior and evolution of supermassive black holes, proof of dark matter and gravitational wave events, the viability of habitable exoplanets – has been fascinating,” said retired NASA astrophysicist Martin Weisskopf, who led Chandra scientific development at Marshall beginning in the late 1970s. “Chandra has opened new windows in astrophysics that we’d hardly begun to imagine in the years prior to launch.”
Following extensive development and testing by a contract team managed and led by Marshall, Chandra was lifted to space aboard the space shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999. Marshall has continued to manage the program for NASA ever since.
“How much technology from 1999 is still in use today?” said Chandra researcher Douglas Swartz. “We don’t use the same camera equipment, computers, or phones from that era. But one technological success – Chandra – is still going strong, and still so powerful that it can read a stop sign from 12 miles away.”
That lasting value is no accident. During early concept development, Chandra – known prior to launch as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility – was intended to be a 15-year, serviceable mission like that of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, enabling periodic upgrades by visiting astronauts.
But in the early 1990s, as NASA laid plans to build the International Space Station in orbit, the new X-ray observatory’s budget was revised. A new, elliptical orbit would carry Chandra a third of the way to the Moon, or roughly 80,000 miles from Earth at apogee. That meant a shorter mission life – five years – and no periodic servicing.
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the longest cargo ever carried to space aboard the space shuttle, seen in Columbia’s payload bay prior to being tilted upward for release and deployment on July 23, 1999.NASA
The engineering design team at Marshall, its contractors, and the mission support team at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory revised their plan, minimizing the impact to Chandra’s science. In doing so, they enabled a long-running science mission so successful that it would capture the imagination of the nation and lead NASA to extend its duration past that initial five-year period.
“There was a lot of excitement and a lot of challenges – but we met them and conquered them,” said Marshall project engineer David Hood, who joined the Chandra development effort in 1988.
“The field of high-powered X-ray astronomy was still so relatively young, it wasn’t just a matter of building a revolutionary observatory,” Weisskopf said. “First, we had to build the tools necessary to test, analyze, and refine the hardware.”
Marshall renovated and expanded its X-ray Calibration Facility – now known as the X-ray & Cryogenic Facility – to calibrate Chandra’s instruments and conduct space-like environment testing of sensitive hardware. That work would, years later, pave the way for Marshall testing of advanced mirror optics for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
On July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory is released from space shuttle Columbia’s payload bay. Twenty-five years later, Chandra continues to make valuable discoveries about high-energy sources and phenomena across the universe.NASA
“Marshall has a proven history of designing for long-term excellence and extending our lifespan margins,” Turk said. “Our missions often tend to last well past their end date.”
Chandra is a case in point. The team has automated some of Chandra’s operations for efficiency. They also closely monitor key elements of the spacecraft, such as its thermal protection system, which have degraded as anticipated over time, due to the punishing effects of the space environment.
“Chandra’s still a workhorse, but one that needs gentler handling,” Turk said. The team met that challenge by meticulously modeling and tracking Chandra’s position and behavior in orbit and paying close attention to radiation, changes in momentum, and other obstacles. They have also employed creative approaches, making use of data from sensors on the spacecraft in new ways.
Acting project manager Andrew Schnell, who leads the Chandra team at Marshall, said the mission’s length means the spacecraft is now overseen by numerous “third-generation engineers” such as Turk. He said they’re just as dedicated and driven as their senior counterparts, who helped deliver Chandra to launch 25 years ago.
An artist’s illustration depicting NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in flight, with a vivid star field behind it. Chandra’s solar panels are deployed and its camera “eye” open on the cosmos.NASA
The work also provides a one-of-a-kind teaching opportunity, Turk said. “Troubleshooting Chandra has taught us how to find alternate solutions for everything from an interrupted sensor reading to aging thermocouples, helping us more accurately diagnose issues with other flight hardware and informing design and planning for future missions,” she said.
Well-informed, practically trained engineers and scientists are foundational to productive teams, Hood said – a fact so crucial to Chandra’s success that its project leads and support engineers documented the experience in a paper titled, “Lessons We Learned Designing and Building the Chandra Telescope.”
“Former program manager Fred Wojtalik said it best: ‘Teams win,’” Hood said. “The most important person on any team is the person doing their work to the best of their ability, with enthusiasm and pride. That’s why I’m confident Chandra’s still got some good years ahead of her. Because that foundation has never changed.”
As Chandra turns the corner on its silver anniversary, the team on the ground is ready for whatever fresh challenge comes next.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
Media Contact:Jonathan Deal / Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov / lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
Universe’s missing matter may be explained by galaxies leaking gas
Could we set Uranus on fire to steal its hidden diamonds?
Cave discovered on Moon could be home for humans
Chandra Sees the Peacock’s Galaxy
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory launch, the Chandra team released this never-seen-before image of NGC 6872, a spiral galaxy in the Pavo (Peacock) constellation, on July 22, 2024. This image and 24 others, which all include data from Chandra, demonstrate how X-ray astronomy explores all corners of the universe.
NGC 6872 is 522,000 light-years across, making it more than five times the size of the Milky Way galaxy; in 2013, astronomers from the United States, Chile, and Brazil found it to be the largest-known spiral galaxy, based on archival data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. This record was surpassed by NGC 262, a galaxy that measures 1.3 million light-years in diameter.
See more photos released for this celebration.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, L. Frattare, and J. Major
AI ‘deepfake’ faces detected using astronomy methods
Nature, Published online: 22 July 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02364-y
Analysing reflections of light in the eyes can help to determine an image’s authenticity.A temperate super-Jupiter imaged with JWST in the mid-infrared
Nature, Published online: 24 July 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07837-8
A temperate super-Jupiter imaged with JWST in the mid-infraredPhysicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
Rosemary Fowler discovered the kaon particle during her doctoral research in 1948 but gave up PhD to have a family
A trailblazing physicist who gave up her PhD 75 years ago to have a family has received an honorary doctorate from her former university.
Rosemary Fowler, 98, discovered the kaon particle during her doctoral research under Cecil Powell at the University of Bristol in 1948, which contributed to his Nobel prize for physics in 1950.
Continue reading...NASA’s Juno Mission Captures the Colorful and Chaotic Clouds of Jupiter
Image processing by Gary Eason © CC BY
During its 61st close flyby of Jupiter on May 12, 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this color-enhanced view of the giant planet’s northern hemisphere. It provides a detailed view of chaotic clouds and cyclonic storms in an area known to scientists as a folded filamentary region. In these regions, the zonal jets that create the familiar banded patterns in Jupiter’s clouds break down, leading to turbulent patterns and cloud structures that rapidly evolve over the course of only a few days.
Citizen scientist Gary Eason made this image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument, applying digital processing techniques to enhance color and clarity.
At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 68 degrees north of the equator.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.
More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.
Found: the hidden link between star-forming molecular clouds
Nature, Published online: 19 July 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02266-z
Connections between three interstellar clouds of gas and dust offer a glimpse into their birth.Zombie galaxy came back to life after 20 million years
New Evidence Adds to Findings Hinting at Network of Caves on Moon
An international team of scientists using data from NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) has discovered evidence of caves beneath the Moon’s surface.
In re-analyzing radar data collected by LRO’s Mini-RF (Miniature Radio-Frequency) instrument in 2010, the team found evidence of a cave extending more than 200 feet from the base of a pit. The pit is located 230 miles northeast of the first human landing site on the Moon in Mare Tranquillitatis. The full extent of the cave is unknown, but it could stretch for miles beneath the mare.
Scientists have suspected for decades that there are subsurface caves on the Moon, just like there are on Earth. Pits that may lead to caves were suggested in images from NASA’s lunar orbiters that mapped the Moon’s surface before NASA’s Apollo human landings. A pit was then confirmed in 2009 from images taken by JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Kaguya orbiter, and many have since been found across the Moon through images and thermal measurements of the surface taken by LRO.
NASA’s LRO Finds Lunar Pits Harbor Comfortable Temperatures“Now the analysis of the Mini-RF radar data tells us how far these caves might extend,” said Noah Petro, LRO project scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Lunar Pits Could Shelter Astronauts, Reveal Details of How ‘Man in the Moon’ FormedLike “lava tubes” found here on Earth, scientists suspect that lunar caves formed when molten lava flowed beneath a field of cooled lava, or a crust formed over a river of lava, leaving a long, hollow tunnel. If the ceiling of a solidified lava tube collapses, it opens a pit, like a skylight, that can lead into the rest of the cave-like tube.
Evidence is mounting that an intricate, winding network of channels exist just below the surface of the Moon. These “lava tubes” are produced by underground flowing magma from ancient volcanoes. Credit: NASAMini-RF is operated by The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon. NASA is returning to the Moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
A hot-Jupiter progenitor on a super-eccentric retrograde orbit
Nature, Published online: 17 July 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07688-3
The spectroscopic and photometric observations of a high-mass, transiting warm Jupiter, TIC 241249530 b, with an orbital eccentricity of 0.94, provide evidence that hot Jupiters may have formed by means of a high-eccentricity tidal-migration pathway.