Mysterious objects at the edge of the electromagnetic spectrum

The Fermi Space Telescope has finished mapping the sky at high energies. He discovered about 500 objects glowing with gamma rays, many of them are huge mysterious bodies called Fermi bubbles

The human eye is essential to astronomy. Without being able to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies was forever closed to us. However, astronomers cannot use their eyes to see the unseen.
Outside the human field of vision is a whole electromagnetic spectrum of wonders. Every type of light - from radio waves to gamma waves reveals something unique to us about the universe. Certain wavelengths are best for studying black holes, "others reveal newborn stars and planets," while others illuminate the early years of cosmic history.
NASA has many telescopes that "do work" at wavelengths along the electromagnetic spectrum. One of them, the Earth-orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope, has just crossed a new frontier of the electromagnetic spectrum.
"Ferrmi captures crazy energetic photons," says Dave Thompson, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "And it discovers so many of them that we were able to use it to produce the first map that spans the entire sky of the universe at very high energies."
This is what the sky looks like near the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum, between 10 billion and 100 billion electron volts. "
The light we see in the human eye consists of photons with energies of 2 to 3 electron volts. The gamma rays that Fermi detects are billions of times more energetic, from 20 million to over 300 billion electron volts. These gamma-ray photons are so energetic that they cannot be guided by mirrors and lenses found in ordinary telescopes. Instead, Fermi uses a sensor more akin to a Geiger counter than a telescope. If we could wear gamma-ray glasses such as Fermi's, we would be able to see powerful balls of energy—individual gamma rays created by cosmic phenomena, such as supermassive black holes and hypernova explosions. The sky will show us full of feverish activity.
Before the Fermi launch in June 2008, only four celestial sources of photons in this energy range were known. "In the last three years, Fermi discovered about 500 additional sources," says Thompson.
What is inside this new domain?
"Mystery first," says Thompson. "About a third of the new sources cannot be clearly linked to any of the known types of objects that produce gamma rays. We have no idea what they are."
All the rest have one thing in common: enormous energy.
"Among them are supermassive black holes called blazars, the sensational remnants of supernova explosions, and rapidly rotating neutron stars known to us as pulsars."
And some gamma rays seem to be coming out of Fermi bubbles - huge structures that originate in the center of the Milky Way and extend for about 20,000 light years above and below the galactic plane. How exactly these bubbles were formed is another mystery.
Now that the first map of the sky is complete, Fermi is working on an even more sensitive and detailed survey.
"In the coming years, Fermi should reveal something new about all these phenomena, what drives them, why there are objects that produce high energy levels, energy levels that are out of this world," says David Funk, from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, who heads the team of researchers who published the sky map.
"For now, the rabbi of the hidden about the visible about 'the world of Fermi', says Thompson: "It's very exciting!"
For information on the NASA website