The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at 15: Observing the Vibrant Universe

The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope’s Large Area Telescope (LAT), initially conceived of in the 1990’s here at Stanford and SLAC, was designed, built and is operated by an international scientific collaboration. Launched on June 8, 2008, Fermi has brought new insights into pulsars and neutron stars, supernova remnants, cosmic rays, binary systems, active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts, and has revealed new cosmic sources of high-energy radiation. In this talk I will highlight some of the discoveries from 15 years of Fermi monitoring of our very vibrant universe. International collaboration has been essential to the scientific success of Fermi - I will summarize why, as well as present some lessons-learned from overcoming the inevitable challenges encountered by international collaborations. I’ll conclude with a look ahead to what Fermi can contribute to a new era of time-domain, multi-messenger observations.

Speaker: Peter Michelson, Stanford University