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Nova illustration

Shock Waves Power an Exploding Star

Roughly 50 times each year, a star nearing the end of its life accretes too much material from a close companion star and erupts in a violent display of light — shedding its outer surface and propelling shock waves into our galaxy — only to recover and smolder as it … Continue Reading →


GRB all-sky map

Back to School with GRB 101

Up until a few years ago, gamma-ray bursts (or GRBs, for short) were arguably the biggest mystery in high-energy astronomy. Basically, gamma-ray bursts are brief, extremely bright bursts of gamma-rays (as the name implies). They appeared at random across the sky. But what are they? What causes that burst? And … Continue Reading →


Fermi MICA videos

Fermi Inspires

We blogged last year about students at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) collaborating with Fermi scientists to create short films illustrating or inspired by results from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Observatory. Just recently, a new group of students presented their own Fermi videos, and we thought we would share … Continue Reading →


Jazz sequence (GRB 130427A)

The Nexus of Art and Science, Part 2

We recently blogged about students from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) making animations inspired by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another student, Turner Gillespie, also from MICA, spent the summer working on an animation of the “sound” of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). A scientist was working on turning … Continue Reading →


The Nexus of Art and Science, Part 1

It’s always cool when you stumble across projects that cross different fields of study. We learned that students at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) worked with scientists during Spring of 2014 to produce five very short animations illustrating, or inspired by, results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory. Fermi … Continue Reading →


The Fermi All-Sky Cake

If the idea of a Fermi cake sounds familiar, it’s because we featured the cake replica of the Fermi satellite for its 5th birthday. Our science bakers were at it again for a Science as Food competition that was part of a recent science poster event. Judy Racusin along with … Continue Reading →


Giant Space Bubbles

There’s a lot of things we know now about the Milky Way that we didn’t know even a few years ago. When I was in college, for example, there was debate over whether our galaxy was a barred spiral or not. Now we know that our galaxy does indeed have … Continue Reading →


Happy birthday, Fermi!

Recently we passed the 5th birthday of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. And there was cake! Yup, this satellite is made of cake! And candy! Credit: Eric Winter We recently asked, why infrared? And we could just as easily ask, why gamma-rays? As it turns out, there are many strange … Continue Reading →


Awesomeness Roundup

Awesomeness Round-Up – 12/22/2011

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • December 22, 2011
  • Comments Off on Awesomeness Round-Up – 12/22/2011

Credit: NASA/ESA/HubbleSite Looking for a space-themed way to say “Happy Holidays!” to your family and friends? How about some printable holiday cards with Hubble images? Every card features fabulous astronomical objects… and when you go to download a card, you’ll find links to articles about related Hubble discoveries! The ornaments … Continue Reading →


Awesomeness Round-up

Awesomeness Round-Up – 9/14/2011

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • September 14, 2011
  • Comments Off on Awesomeness Round-Up – 9/14/2011

Bill Nye the Science Guy paid a visit to NASA Goddard on Thursday, September 9th, 2011, and while he was here he checked out some James Webb Space Telescope hardware and talked to some of the project’s scientists. There’s a great Flickr set of photos of his visit – but … Continue Reading →


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