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By NASA
Did you know some of the brightest sources of light in the sky come from the regions around black holes in the centers of galaxies? It sounds a little contradictory, but it’s true! They may not look bright to our eyes, but satellites have spotted oodles of them across the universe.
One of those satellites is NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi has found thousands of these kinds of galaxies since it launched in 2008, and there are many more out there!
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Watch a cosmic gamma-ray fireworks show in this animation using just a year of data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Each object’s magenta circle grows as it brightens and shrinks as it dims. The yellow circle represents the Sun following its apparent annual path across the sky. The animation shows a subset of the LAT gamma-ray records available for more than 1,500 objects in a continually updated repository. Over 90% of these sources are a type of galaxy called a blazar, powered by the activity of a supermassive black hole. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center/Daniel Kocevski Black holes are regions of space that have so much gravity that nothing — not light, not particles, nada — can escape. Most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and these black holes are hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of our Sun. In active galactic nuclei (also called “AGN” for short, or just “active galaxies”) the central region is stuffed with gas and dust that’s constantly falling toward the black hole. As the gas and dust fall, they start to spin and form a disk. Because of the friction and other forces at work, the spinning disk starts to heat up.
This composite view of the active galaxy Markarian 573 combines X-ray data (blue) from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio observations (purple) from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico with a visible light image (gold) from the Hubble Space Telescope. Markarian 573 is an active galaxy that has two cones of emission streaming away from the supermassive black hole at its center. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Paggi et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA The disk’s heat gets emitted as light, but not just wavelengths of it that we can see with our eyes. We detect light from AGN across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from the more familiar radio and optical waves through to the more exotic X-rays and gamma rays, which we need special telescopes to spot.
In the heart of an active galaxy, matter falling toward a supermassive black hole creates jets of particles traveling near the speed of light as shown in this artist’s concept. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab About one in 10 AGN beam out jets of energetic particles, which are traveling almost as fast as light. Scientists are studying these jets to try to understand how black holes — which pull everything in with their huge amounts of gravity — somehow provide the energy needed to propel the particles in these jets.
This artist’s concept shows two views of the active galaxy TXS 0128+554, located around 500 million light-years away. Left: The galaxy’s central jets appear as they would if we viewed them both at the same angle. The black hole, embedded in a disk of dust and gas, launches a pair of particle jets traveling at nearly the speed of light. Scientists think gamma rays (magenta) detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope originate from the base of these jets. As the jets collide with material surrounding the galaxy, they form identical lobes seen at radio wavelengths (orange). The jets experienced two distinct bouts of activity, which created the gap between the lobes and the black hole. Right: The galaxy appears in its actual orientation, with its jets tipped out of our line of sight by about 50 degrees. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Many of the ways we tell one type of AGN from another depend on how they’re oriented from our point of view. With radio galaxies, for example, we see the jets from the side as they’re beaming vast amounts of energy into space. Then there’s blazars, which are a type of AGN that have a jet that is pointed almost directly at Earth, which makes the AGN particularly bright.
Blazar 3C 279’s historic gamma-ray flare in 2015 can be seen in this image from the Large Area Telescope on NASA’s Fermi satellite. During the flare, the blazar outshone the Vela pulsar, usually the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky. NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration Fermi has been searching the sky for gamma ray sources since 2008. More than half of the sources it has found have been blazars. Gamma rays are useful because they can tell us a lot about how particles accelerate and how they interact with their environment.
So why do we care about AGN? We know that some AGN formed early in the history of the universe. With their enormous power, they almost certainly affected how the universe changed over time. By discovering how AGN work, we can understand better how the universe came to be the way it is now.
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Last Updated Apr 30, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Searching for the Dark in the Light
The Perseverance rover acquired this image of the “Hare Bay” abrasion patch using its SHERLOC WATSON camera (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, and the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. This image was acquired on April 18, 2025 (Sol 1479, or Martian day 1,479 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 12:53:57. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University
Perseverance has been busy exploring lower “Witch Hazel Hill,” an outcrop exposed on the edge of the Jezero crater rim. The outcrop is composed of alternating light and dark layers, and naturally, the team has been trying to understand the makeup of and relationships between the light and dark layers. A few weeks ago, we sampled one of the light-toned layers, which we discovered was made up of very small clasts, or fragments of rocks or minerals, at “Main River.” Since then, we have learned that the dark layers tend to be composed of larger clasts compared to the light layers, and we’ve been searching for a place to sample this coarser-grained rock type. Sometimes, these coarser-grained rocks also contain spherules, which are of great interest to the science team because they provide clues about the process that formed these layered rocks.
Perseverance first looked at a dark layer at “Puncheon Rock” with an abrasion. We then examined a dark layer at “Wreck Apple,” near “Sally’s Cove,” but we could not identify a suitable surface to abrade. So, while team members searched for other locations to study the coarse-grained units and spherules, Perseverance drove south to “Port Anson.”
Perseverance acquired this image of the “Strong Island” workspace near Port Anson using its onboard Front Left Hazard Avoidance Camera A (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/rover-components/#eyes). This image was acquired on April 12, 2025 (Sol 1473, or Martian day 1,473 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 12:50:32. NASA/JPL-Caltech Port Anson was intriguing because, from orbit, it showed a clear contact between the light layers of Witch Hazel Hill and a distinct unit below it. And, although the rocks below the Port Anson contact do show interesting compositional differences with those of Witch Hazel Hill, they weren’t the coarse-grained rocks we were looking for. We still performed an abrasion there, at Strong Island, before driving back up north for another attempt at investigating the coarser-grained rocks.
We aimed for “Pine Pond,” which neighbors “Dennis Pond,” to abrade at “Hare Bay.” With the data just coming down over the weekend, the team will be hard at work to figure out if we captured the coarse grains and spherules, and if it is representative of rocks we have seen before or not. The image below is a close-up of this most recent abrasion patch at Hare Bay — what do you think? Stay tuned to find out!
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Last Updated Apr 25, 2025 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
ECF 2024 Quadchart McGuirk.pdf
Christopher McGuirk
Colorado School of Mines
This project will investigate and develop improved storage methods for the fuels needed to generate electrical power in places where sunlight is not available. The effort will focus on particularly tailored materials called Metal Oxide Frameworks, or MOFs, that can be used to store methane and oxygen. The methane and oxygen can be reacted in a solid oxide fuel cell to generate electricity, and storing them in a MOF could potentially result in significant mass and cost savings over traditional storage tanks which also require active pressure and thermal regulation. The team will use a number of computational and experimental tools to develop a MOF structure suitable for this application.
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Last Updated Apr 18, 2025 EditorLoura Hall Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Sols 4505-4506: Up, up and onto the Devil’s Gate
This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4503 (2025-04-07 00:33:50 UTC). NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
Earth planning date: Monday, April 7, 2025
Over the weekend, we completed our drive up the steep side of a canyon, up onto “Devil’s Gate,” a small butte which forms part of the ridge along the top of the canyon and now we can see down into the next canyon. It is always true that we are going somewhere no one has been before – that’s the idea of an exploratory mission after all, and everyone kind of gets used to it, we don’t stop to think about it. But today, coming over the top of a hill like this and fully looking for the first time into an area that we have only had glimpses of before, it really brings it home that the mission is doing something extraordinary, something out of this world …. and brings that feeling of awe back into focus.
We did not pass SRAP (Slip Risk Assessment Process) a couple of times as we climbed up the side of this canyon, meaning that the contact science instruments (APXS and MAHLI) had to stand down for that day’s planning. However, this morning, in addition to a brand new vista, we saw that all six wheels are firmly on the ground and we passed SRAP quickly this morning, which must have been a relief to the rover planner in charge of assessing it today! (no one wants to be the bearer of bad news, day after day!)
Bedrock here has both flat bedrock and amazing large nodular features, which appear to have “wind tails” caused by winds consistently blowing in the same direction. This is a Touch and Go plan, so APXS and MAHLI are focusing on a single target, the brushed “Coronado” target on the flat bedrock in front of us. ChemCam will use LIBS to investigate the nodular features at “La Cumbre Peak.”
Near the rover, Mastcam will image some small diagenetic features at “Boulder Oaks” and the LIBS target. The 3×2 (2 rows of 3 images) “La Jolla Valley” mosaic focuses on a very nodular patch, just outside of the workspace reachable by the arm. Further from the rover, the 6×2 mosaic (2 rows of 6 images) “Los Penasquitos” looks at an amazing almost vertical vein. This discontinuous vein stretches for about 6 meters (about 18 feet), with vein fins sticking above the surface at various points, like a series of shark fins breaking the bedrock surface. Much further afield, ChemCam will acquire a long distance image on “Condor Peak,” which appears to have large scale vein networks, known as “boxwork structures” and may be an early example of the boxworks we are hoping to reach in Fall 2025.
The ENV (Environmental and Atmospheric group) planned a Mastcam “tau” measurement, to look at dust in the atmosphere. There is a paired Navcam activity, looking at dust devils towards the north of the crater on the first sol and towards the south on the second sol. A suprahorizon movie and our usual DAN and REMS measurements round out this plan.
Let’s see what the next drive will reveal to us!
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Sols 4502-4504: Sneaking Past Devil’s Gate
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the terrain around it on April 3, 2025, showing a small ridgeline on the right side, “Devil’s Gate,” and the base of Texoli butte, visible on the left side of the image. Curiosity acquired the image using its Left Navigation Camera on Sol 4500, or Martian day 4,500 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, at 23:08:35 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework
Earth planning date: Friday, April 4, 2025
We continue to make progress driving up Mount Sharp, each day gaining new perspectives on the spectacular, towering buttes surrounding our path. To get to the next canyon we can ascend, we have to swing around the north end of a small ridgeline, “Devil’s Gate,” which is on the right side of the image above.
The blocks scattered around the base of Devil’s Gate are ripe with interesting structures, which motivated the acquisition of an RMI mosaic across the ridge. Those blocks are also inconvenient for driving and parking the rover with all six wheels firmly on the ground, the latter of which is needed to be able to unstow the arm for APXS and MAHLI observations. Our last drive ended with our front wheels not quite on solid ground, so we had to forego arm work this weekend. But as you can imagine with the view around us, Devil’s Gate was not the only feature that the team was excited to image. ChemCam added a second RMI mosaic along the base of “Texoli” butte, which you can see the flank of on the left side of the image above. Mastcam planned a mosaic across an expanse of bedrock that looks like rolling waves frozen in place at “Maidenhair Falls.”
The rocks right in front of the rover were also wonderfully complex in their textures and structures. ChemCam targeted two different textures expressed in the workspace — one across fine layers at “Arroyo Burro” and one across rough, platy, and gray material at “Arroyo Conejo.” Mastcam documented the block containing both these targets with a stereo mosaic that will give us a three-dimensional view of its structures.
We planned a drive to get us further around the base of Devil’s Gate, after which we will acquire an autonomously-targeted ChemCam LIBS raster and early morning Navcam and Mastcam mosaics looking back on the path we have recently traveled. DAN is scheduled for about seven hours of data collecting across the plan, both during science blocks and our drive. The sky gets a lot of attention in this plan with suites of observations taken at two different times — near midday and early morning — to assess variability across the day. Each window of time had Navcam dust-devil and cloud movies, and measurements of the amount of dust in the atmosphere. The early morning block of observations also had multiple cloud movies cover the full sky. REMS and RAD have regular measurements across the sols.
See you Monday, when we are a bit farther past Devil’s Gate!
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Last Updated Apr 07, 2025 Related Terms
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