Fermi’s 12-year View of the Gamma-ray Sky

This image shows the sky as you would see it in gamma-ray light. It is an oval, which represents the sky folded out onto a flat surface. The oval is primarily blue, showing a background of gamma-rays that permeates the entire sky. A bright band in shades of yellow, orange, and red goes across the center of the image from left to right, which shows gamma rays from the plane of the Milky Way. There are dots of yellow and red throughout the rest of the image, indicating distant galaxies that emit gamma rays.
NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration
February 12, 2022
CreditNASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration
Historical DateFebruary 12, 2022
Language
  • english

This image shows the entire sky as seen by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's Large Area Telescope. The most prominent feature is the bright, diffuse glow running along the middle of the map, which marks the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy. The image was constructed from 12 years of observations using front-converting gamma rays with energies greater than 1 GeV.

More information: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14090

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Fermi’s 12-year View of the Gamma-ray Sky

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