Observation 2.2 Astronomy Cast: Fermi Mission

The Fermi Mission, named after Enrico Fermi, was launched in June of 2008, with a planned 5 year lifespan. It contains two major parts, the Large Area Telescope, and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor. The purpose of the Large Area Telescope is to detect and show gamma rays, rather than visual light as most other telescopes do. The Purpose of the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor is to detect gamma-ray bursts across the sky using fourteen scintillation detectors. An important finding of the Fermi mission was the discovery of two Gamma ray and X-ray bubbles extending from our Milky Way galaxy for 25 light years. Although these bubbles have in the past hindered x-ray and gamma- ray observations, their discovery has opened the possibility of observing these wavelengths without error.