The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has named a new set of 21 gamma-ray constellations after fictional characters such as the Hulk, Godzilla and the Little Prince, among others. The constellations have been constructed in celebration of its Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope’s 10th year of operations, the space agency said in a statement last week.
In the electromagnetic spectrum, gamma rays are the most powerful and are produced by very powerful objects, such as supermassive black holes, pulsars, nova outbursts, the debris of supernova explosions, and gamma-ray bursts. The Fermi Large Area Telescope works to scan the sky and create a list of gamma ray sources in the observable universe.
NASA has developed the telescope in collaboration with the United States Department of Energy and with contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the US.
The new constellations include a few characters from modern mythology, such as the time machine TARDIS from Doctor Who, Godzilla and his heat ray, and the USS Enterprise from Star Trek: The Original Series. They include famous landmarks such as Sweden’s recovered warship, the Washington Monument, Japan’s Mount Fuji, and the Colosseum in Italy. The Schrodinger’s Cat is also represented.
“Developing these unofficial constellations was a fun way to highlight a decade of Fermi’s accomplishments,” said Julie McEnery, the project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the US. “One way or another, all of the gamma-ray constellations have a tie-in to Fermi science.”
The telescope had mapped almost 3,000 gamma-ray sources by 2015, said Goddard’s Elizabeth Ferrara, who led the constellation project. This was 10 times the number known before the mission. “For the first time ever, the number of known gamma-ray sources was comparable to the number of bright stars, so we thought a new set of constellations was a great way to illustrate the point,” she said.
The scientists developed a web-based interactive programme to showcase the gamma-ray constellations, with artwork from an illustrator at California’s Sonoma State University, and a map of the entire gamma-ray sky. Clicking on a constellation turns on its artwork and name, which includes a link to a page with more information. Other controls switch on the visible sky and selected traditional constellations.
“Fermi is still going strong, and we are now preparing a new all-sky LAT [Large Area Telescope] catalogue,” said Jean Ballet, a Fermi team member at the French Atomic Energy Commission. “This will add about 2,000 sources, many varying greatly in brightness, further enriching these constellations and enlivening the high-energy sky.”
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