Status of space-based gamma-ray astronomy
Abstract
Gamma-ray observations give us a direct view into the most extreme environments of the universe. They help us to study astronomical particle accelerators as supernovae remnants, pulsars, active galaxies or gamma-ray bursts and help us to understand the propagation of cosmic rays through our Milky Way. This article summarizes the status of gamma-ray observations from space; it is the write-up of a rapporteur talk given at the 34th ICRC in The Hague, The Netherlands. The primary instrument used in the presented studies is the Large Area Telescope on-board the Fermi Spacecraft, which images the whole gamma-ray sky at photon energies between 20 MeV and 2 TeV. The Fermi mission is currently in its 8th year of observations. This article will review many of the exciting discoveries made in this time, focusing on the most recent ones.
- Publication:
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arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- August 2015
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.1509.00012
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1509.00012
- Bibcode:
- 2015arXiv150900012B
- Keywords:
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- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- This article is the write-up of a rapporteur talk on "Space based gamma-ray astronomy" given at the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (19 pages, 10 figures). Accompanying articles summarize the status of related fields of cosmic-ray research discussed at this conference (references in the text)