NASA Logo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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 →


Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell

#PulsarWeek: The women who study pulsars

  • By Sara Mitchell
  • August 6, 2017
  • Comments Off on #PulsarWeek: The women who study pulsars

For the past week, we have been celebrating #PulsarWeek on social media in honor of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of pulsars. For more on the discovery itself, and about some of the researchers currently studying pulsars in NASA Goddard’s Astrophysics Science Division, here’s a guest blog from Goddard … Continue Reading →


CGRO being deployed via space shuttle

Looking Back: The Legacy of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory

  • By Maggie Masetti
  • April 13, 2016
  • Comments Off on Looking Back: The Legacy of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory

There are great observatories – and then there are “Great Observatories,” a title given to four space telescopes launched in the 1990s/early 2000s, each studying a different wavelength of light. The Hubble Space Telescope, primarily looking at visible light, you are likely familiar with; it was the first launched and … 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 →


Gamma-ray Novae Cake

Science as Food

We’ve got a little running theme here of space cakes here at Blueshift. And we’ve got another one for you – this time it’s a gamma-ray Novae cake. And we also have an interview with the cake-makers, who we have actually featured before (links to their other cakes at at … Continue Reading →


Swift birthday cake

Happy Birthday, Swift!

This is our third Happy Birthday post for a satellite in the last year or so – which is pretty cool actually, to have satellites that are hitting significant milestones and have had the longevity to still be doing great science. We had Fermi’s 5th birthday in August 2013, followed … Continue Reading →


Imagine the Universe Covers

Imagine the Universe

So the big news – that I’ll go ahead and put up front – is that the Imagine the Universe! site just got a big update! Go check it out! It’s ok, I’ll wait right here while you do. It’ll even open in a different tab/window! http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov In a nutshell, … 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 Round-up

Awesomeness Round-up – 8/16/10

Last week, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope team announced that they had spotted something that had never been seen before – gamma rays coming from a nova. Back in March, Japanese amateur astronomers saw a dramatic change in a star in Cygnus and informed the professional astronomy community. Swift took … Continue Reading →


Podcast: At the Edge of Space

Podcast: At the Edge of Space

Click to listen! (8MB MP3, right-click to save) Transcript (Text, PDF) When you were a kid, dreaming of the future, did you expect to have a flying car someday? Or to live on the Moon? Traveling into space has fueled the dreams of many people, but the reality is that … Continue Reading →


NASA Logo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Goddard