A galaxy located billions of light-years away is commanding the attention of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and astronomers around the globe. Thanks to a series of flares that began September 15, the galaxy is now the brightest source in the gamma-ray sky -- more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer.

Check it out! http://fermi.sonoma.edu/

The official NASA Fermi blog can be found here: http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/GLAST

Find out more here: http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/component/content/article/169

An international team of astrophysicists using telescopes on the ground and in space have uncovered surprising changes in radiation emitted by an active galaxy. The picture that emerges from these first-ever simultaneous observations with optical, X-ray and new-generation gamma-ray telescopes is much more complex than scientists expected and challenges current theories of how the radiation is generated.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/blazar.html

"The first gamma-ray burst to be seen in high-resolution from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen."

Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/high_grb.html

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered 12 new gamma-ray-only pulsars and has detected gamma-ray pulses from 18 others. The finds are transforming our understanding of how these stellar cinders work.

Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/dozen_pulsars.html

Remember the blog post I made a few months back? The one about how I was inviting my beautiful, adoring fans, i.e. YA'LL, to submit a cool new name for me post-launch lest scientists name me something that takes a doctorate in linguistics to pronounce? Yeah, that one.

Well, I asked and you answered; boy, did you answer! Over 12,000 entries were received from all over the world. THANKS!

Alas, only one name could be picked, and after several weeks of agonizing over which wonderful name to pick, the suits in NASA finally settled on Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, after the famous, Nobel Prize winning Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. I think... no, I know I like it! Fermi was a cool dude who made several important advances in science. I am glad I was named Fermi.

You can read about the announcement here:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/glast_renamed.html

By the by I will be featured, with my new name in the next issue of Epo's Chronicles, coming out next week. Check me out!

Here is my new logo:

While only on orbit for 40 days and still in the process of a two-month checkout, NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST) has already detected 12 powerful gamma-ray bursts, an encouraging harbinger of good things to come for this mission. The gamma-ray bursts were detected by the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM), one of two instruments on the spacecraft.

Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/glast_gbm.html