NASA's Fermi telescope detects gamma-ray from 'star factories' in other galaxies

		IMAGE: M82, also known as the Cigar Galaxy, lies 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Fermi’s LAT and the ground-based VERITAS observatory have detected diffuse gamma rays from... Click here for more information.

Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two so-called "starburst" galaxies, plus a satellite of our own Milky Way galaxy, represent a new category of gamma-ray-emitting objects detected both by Fermi and ground-based observatories.