Pulsars are a kind of neutron star, a city-sized remnant of a supernova. Neutron stars contain more mass than our Sun in a ball less than 25 km across.; they’re the densest matter we can see directly. They possess strong magnetic fields, produce streams of energetic particles, and spin quickly.
This visualization shows 294 gamma-ray pulsars, first plotted on an image of the sky as seen from Earth and then transitioning to a view from above the galaxy. The symbols identify different types of pulsars. Young pulsars appear to blink in real time—except for the Crab because its rate is only slightly lower than the video frame rate. Millisecond pulsars appear steady because their pulse rate too quickly to see.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is credited with the discovery of 294 of these pulsars. The Crab, Vela, and Geminga were among the 11 gamma-ray pulsars known before Fermi launched. Other notable objects are also highlighted. Distances are shown in light-years.
Video Credit: NASA
Just before 2000 UTC on 14 January, the Fermi and Swift satellites detected a spike of gamma rays from the constellation Fornax. The missions alerted the astronomical community to the location of the burst, dubbed GRB 190114C. Ground-based facilities detected radiation with up to a trillion times the energy of visible light from the gamma-ray burst.
Godzilla isn’t one of the official 88 constellations. It’s a new, unofficial x-ray constellation. The NASA team responsible for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has devised a set of constellations constructed from sources in the gamma-ray sky. The new constellations include a few characters from modern myths. Among them are the Little Prince; the TARDIS from “Doctor Who;” Godzilla and his heat ray; the antimatter-powered U.S.S. Enterprise from “Star Trek: The Original Series;” and the Hulk, the product of a gamma-ray experiment gone awry.