New Constellations

Sure, you can pick out Orion, the big and little dippers, and the North star. Maybe you even know your other zodiac constellations, but those are all in the sky visible to our naked eye.

But if you are mapping gamma rays, you can see many more stars in space than from Earth. Scientists using data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have had the fun job of mapping and drawing new constellations of these stars.

Shapes include Godzilla, Einstein, Mjolnir, Hulk, Tardis, a castle, USS Enterprise, and Fermi itself. You can go see them on their interactive website.

Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) has been surveying the sky every day since July 2008 measuring gamma rays. That’s almost exactly as long as Hawk and Young have known each other!

These are emitted by all sorts of cosmic phenomena, including pulsars, nova outbursts, gamma ray bursts, and supermassive black holes.

Thanks and props go to Sonoma State University-based illustrator, Aurore Simonnet for the art on these constellations!

Sources:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6296213/NASA-reveals-gamma-ray-constellations-fun-interactive-site.html 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-fermi-mission-energizes-the-sky-with-gamma-ray-constellations 

 

OR we can get a little silly and youthful and rename the stars we already see into Harry Potter’s Glasses and Paddington’s boots.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5173455/Astronomers-new-constellations-Harry-Potter-Bolt.html

Advertisement