Colloq Abstract - McEnery
February 9
11:00am Mountain
Julie McEnery (NASA/Goddard)
Exploring the Extreme Universe with Ten Years Observations with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
Abstract
In its first 10 years of observations, the Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope has transformed our understanding of the high energy gamma-ray sky, opening an important and previously unexplored window on a wide variety of phenomena. These have included the discovery of an population of pulsars pulsing only in gamma rays; the detection of photons up to 10s of GeV from gamma-ray bursts, enhancing our understanding of the astrophysics of these powerful explosions; the detection of thousands of active galaxies; and constraints on
phenomena such as supersymmetric dark-matter annihilations and exotic relics from the Big Bang. Continuous monitoring of the high-energy gamma-ray sky has uncovered numerous outbursts from active galaxies and the discovery of transient sources in our galaxy. In this talk I will describe the current status of the Fermi observatory, review the science highlights from the first 10 years of operations and discuss future opportunities with Fermi.
