November 29, 1995
Billions of years of cosmic evolution — the birth and death of stars, the slow coalescence of planets, the patient unfolding of life — all...
Releasing Compton
Birthday · November 29, 1995
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published November 29, 1995. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Named for Nobel laureate physicist Arthur Holly Compton, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) Satellite was launched in April of 1991 aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. CGRO's mission is to explore the Universe at gamma-ray energies. The massive space based observatory is seen here held upright in the shuttle payload bay behind smiling astronaut Jerry Ross. Ross and his colleague Jay Apt have just finished a successful, unplanned spacewalk to free a jammed antenna prior to releasing CGRO into orbit. CGRO has been operating successfully since, providing the first all-sky survey at gamma-ray energies along with exciting new observations of the sun, quasars, pulsars, supernova, black holes, and gamma-ray bursts.