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image credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Collaboration



rising through a billowing cloud of smoke, a long time ago from a planet very very close by, this Delta II rocket left Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's launch pad 17-B at 12:05 pm EDT on june 11, 2008

snug in the payload section was GLAST, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope

GLAST's detector technology was developed for use in terrestrial particle accelerators

so from orbit, GLAST can detect gamma-rays from extreme environments above the Earth and across the distant Universe, including supermassive black holes at the centers of distant active galaxies, and the sources of powerful gamma-ray bursts

those formidable cosmic accelerators achieve energies not attainable in earthbound laboratories

now known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, on the 11 year anniversary of its launch, let the Fermi Science Playoffs begin











































in apod.nasa.gov/apod