One of our papers from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (the “Bright Source List”) accumulated enough citations that Thomson Reuters interviewed several of us about the work. These were interesting questions, because they made us think about how to reach out to those who are not already fascinated by astronomy. You can read the interview at http://sciencewatch.com/dr/fbp/2010/10aprfbp/10aprfbpThomET/.

Several of us from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Project are in India for two weeks assisting with a training program for young astronomers - mostly graduate students and post-docs.  COSPAR, the COmmittee on SPAce Research, sponsors programs called Capacity Building Workshops, designed to help future researchers learn about analyzing astronomical data. Because the Fermi data are all public (available from the Fermi Science Support Center at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/), our project is a logical one for such a program.  About 30 enthusiastic, talented young astronomers from a range of countries - Indonesia, Egypt, India, Turkey, China, South Africa, and Korea - are meeting here at a small, isolated venue called Our Native Village, near Bangalore (the local sponsor is the Raman Research Institute). They listen to lectures on gamma-ray astronomy and data analysis techniques in the morning and then work on projects using real Fermi data in the afternoons.  Thanks to some dedicated organizers - Mariano Mendez, Biswajit Paul, and Peter Willmore - the workshop is running smoothly.  It is exciting to see a new generation of astronomers learn about the Fermi project.

Although scientists are most interested in publishing their results in scientific journals, we all enjoy getting some publicity for our efforts. The Fermi Large Area Telescope team had that happen last week, when Science magazine decided to feature the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on its cover. Here is the link to the Science Website.

The reason Science chose Fermi for the cover was that three of our scientific articles (all related to pulsars) appeared in that issue of the magazine. Pulsars, those rapidly-rotating neutron stars that appear to blink, have turned out to be one of the really exciting areas of research for Fermi.

Science magazine cover, August 14, 2009.

As part of the 100 hours of astronomy, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Large Area Telescope team assembled a movie showing the variability of the gamma-ray sky. Blazars (quasars and BL Lac objects that have a jet pointed right at us) are prominent gamma-ray sources and are extremely variable, often flaring dramatically on time scales of a day or less. The link to information about this move is http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/flare_fade.html.

Elizabeth Hays, one of my colleagues at Goddard, did an outstanding job of presenting this movie during the “Around the World in 80 Telescopes” activity. The unsung hero of this movie, however, was Jean Ballet, a colleague at CEA Saclay in France. Jean prepared the 87 all-sky data images that make up the movie. Without his work, there would have been no movie.

I know we will never make it onto David Letterman’s show, but the Fermi LAT team has put out its current “top ten” list of gamma-ray sources seen in the first three months of data from the satellite. The announcement is found at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gammaray_best.html.

With hundreds of candidates, how did the team pick these ten for this release? The answer is a combination of science and practicality.

One aspect of working in a large collaboration is that meetings can be held in a variety of locations.  The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) team includes scientists in the U.S., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and Japan.  Although much of the communication within the team is done electronically (and that makes for a lot of e-mail traffic), we find it valuable to meet in person occasionally.  This time we are meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, where the meeting is being hosted by our colleagues from Hiroshima University.  

I have recently joined the Cosmic Diary group.  Please bear with me while I am learning.

Along with other members of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope team, I am very excited about our announcement in Science Express last week of an extremely powerful and distant gamma-ray burst.  See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1169101. A press release with some images can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/high_grb.html.

Perhaps as interesting as the story itself is the fact that the author list is so large - over 200 of us were involved in this work in some way.  Large collaborations are needed in order to build and operate large space observatories like Fermi.