[podcast] Swift Sees Andromeda in a New Light

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There’s more to the universe than meets the eye – or at least our eyes, which can only detect the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can see just a small fraction of the light emitted by the universe. This is why we have satellites that can observe different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum – they each provide us a different piece of the puzzle.

Scientist Dr. Stefan Immler was part of a team that captured a new and unique view of one of our closest galactic neighbors with the Swift satellite, which has the ability to detect ultraviolet light. The Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, is a beautiful “nearby” spiral galaxy that is actually visible to the naked eye. We talked with Dr. Immler about what his team learned about the galaxy when Swift took a look in the UV.
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[podcast] Cool Science for Hot Times

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Transcript (Text, PDF)
Listen to the full interview with John Mather (Episode 4.5)

Welcome to the July 2007 episode of Blueshift, from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Catch up on the latest astronomy headlines, and listen to our audio scrapbook from the American Astronomical Society meeting in Hawaii.

For this episode, we interviewed Dr. John Mather, co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics. Dr. Mather talks about cosmology, NASA missions, winning the Nobel Prize, and his induction into a little-known Swedish student organization. We’ve also got a new brain teaser!

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