NASAのインスタグラム(nasa) - 1月7日 02時23分

NASA's Fermi Makes First Gamma-ray Study of a Gravitational Lens - An international team of astronomers, using NASA's Fermi observatory, has made the first-ever gamma-ray measurements of a gravitational lens, a kind of natural telescope formed when a rare cosmic alignment allows the gravity of a massive object to bend and amplify light from a more distant source. This accomplishment opens new avenues for research, including a novel way to probe emission regions near supermassive black holes. It may even be possible to find other gravitational lenses with data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Fermi detected a series of bright gamma-ray flares from a source known as B0218+357, located 4.35 billion light-years from Earth in the direction of a constellation called Triangulum. These powerful flares, in a known gravitational lens system, provided the key to making the lens measurement. Astronomers classify B0218+357 as a blazar -- a type of active galaxy noted for its intense emissions and unpredictable behavior. At the blazar's heart is a supersized black hole with a mass millions to billions of times that of the sun. As matter spirals toward the black hole, some of it blasts outward as jets of particles traveling near the speed of light in opposite directions.

This Hubble image of gravitational lens B0218+357 reveals two bright sources separated by about a third of an arcsecond, each an image of the background blazar. Spiral arms belonging to the lensing galaxy also can be seen. B0218+357 boasts the smallest separation of lensed images currently known.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Legacy Archive

#nasa #space #astronomy #fermi #blazar #hubble #hst #aas223 #gammaray #telescope #blackhole #science

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