| Abstract: |
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly called GLAST,
is a mission to measure the cosmic gamma-ray flux in the energy
range 20 MeV to >300 GeV, with supporting measurements for
gamma-ray bursts from 8 keV to 30 MeV. The main instrument
Large Area Telescope (LAT) is a pair conversion telescope built by
a large international collaboration, using silicon micro-strip detectors
for tracking of photon pair conversion products, a CsI calorimeter
with large dynamic range of energy readout and a high efficiency,
segmented anti-coincidence shield for charged particle background
rejection. The LAT has a large instantaneous field of view allowing it
to sweep the entire sky every 2 orbits (approx. 190 minutes), with
an energy resolution between 5% and 15%, and an angular
resolution of a few degrees at 100MeV and rapidly improving to less
than 1 degree at 1GeV and 0.1 degrees at 100GeV. With its recent
launch on 11 June 2008, Fermi now opens a new and important
window on a wide variety of phenomena, including pulsars, black
holes and active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts, the origin of
cosmic rays and supernova remnants, and searches for hypothetica
new phenomena such as supersymmetric dark matter annihilations.
This talk includes early scientific results as well as a description
of the instruments and the mission status.
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