Dr. Peter Michelson, Stanford University

NASA launched the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), on June 11, 2008. Fermi is providing an important window on a wide variety of high-energy phenomena including pulsars, black holes, and active galactic nuclei; gamma-ray bursts; the origin of cosmic rays and supernova remnants; and searches for new phenomena such as supersymmetric dark-matter annihilations and exotic relics from the Big Bang.

The main instrument on the Fermi observatory is a large area telescope (LAT) that measures cosmic gamma-ray radiation in the energy range 20 MeV to >300 GeV. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) measures gamma-ray bursts from 8 keV to 30 MeV. Compared to previous high-energy telescopes, the LAT offers considerable improvement in sensitivity, a larger field-of-view, and much finer angular resolution. It observes 20 percent of the sky at any instant and covers the entire sky every three hours.

This presentation will include a description of the Fermi observatory and an overview of observations made to date. For more information, visit http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/.

Dr. Michelson is a professor of physics and a member of the Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and the W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford University. He also is the principal investigator of the Fermi LAT. After he obtained his PhD in experimental condensed matter physics from Stanford, his interests turned to astrophysics, including gravitational wave detection and compact objects (neutron stars and black holes). He has a BS degree in physics from Santa Clara University.

http://www-glast.stanford.edu/