0:00 A fuzzy band appears across the screen. It is thickest and bright yellow in the center. The band thins as it extends out to the sides and becomes a darker orange. Surrounding the orange layer above and below is a jagged layer of blue. Beyond that is black with a sprinkling of blue smudges. Some of these smudges are larger and have orange and even bright yellow centers. A date is in the corner scrolling through about a month every two seconds beginning on August 10, 2008. The band at the center changes and varies much like a fire. It always has the same basic structure but the fine details of the blue and orange regions continually change. The smudges above and below fade in and out and change in intensity with the orange and yellow centers appearing and disappearing unpredictably. An inset appears at lower left showing the Fermi spacecraft rotating. It has a boxy shape with rectangular bluish extensions that are the solar panels. A yellow outline traces the top portion of Fermi. The words “Large Area Telescope” appear, with the initial letters colored in yellow to spell the instrument’s abbreviation, “LAT.”
0:49 The colorful, changing view of the sky is briefly replaced with a grayer view. A pale, hazy band, the Milky Way, extends across the middle of the screen and is brightest and thickest at the center. Over it are dark, wispy, smoke-like shapes, the dust clouds in our galaxy. Two small galaxies, satellites of our own called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, are visible at about the 4 o’clock position.
0:57 The colorful gamma-ray band returns and is then replaced by two circles side-by-side. A noisy blue and orange band, with slices of yellow in some places, lines their inner edges. The left circle is labeled “North” and the right one “South.” The interior of the circles have many of the small smudges. A few are larger and contain yellow and orange centers. Unlike the rest, one smudge moves along a vertical curved arc first on one circle and then the other. It is labeled “Sun” and at one point expands into a very large, mostly yellow blob before returning to a blue smudge.
1:44 The scene fades back to the horizontal view with the band across the center.
1:50 A new inset appears at lower left showing a small orange sphere surrounded by hazy magnetic field lines that curve up from the top and arc outward and back around to the bottom. Some form wide loops as they emerge from the top of the sphere and enter it again at the bottom; others arc outward from top and bottom at an angle. A green beam of radio emission emerges from the sphere, centered on the long arcs. A magenta glow forms on the outermost parts of the looping field lines. All of this rotates around an unseen axis that’s oriented straight up and down.
2:07 A new inset appears, first showing a side view and then a top view of a dark, cloudy donut shape. In the center of the donut is an orange disk that brightens to yellow and then white at the center. The disk spins like a whirlpool. Emerging from the disk’s center is is a thin, white, wispy, perpendicular jet that flutters in brightness.
2:32 The two-circle view returns. Many circles and labels appear, identifying sources. Each circle is around a bright smudge and labels give the name and distance to the source. The distances range from 425 million light-years away to 10.6 billion light-years.
3:03 The horizontal band view returns.
3:21 The Sun label reappears, tracking the Sun blob as it moves along a track shaped like an S laid on its side. It starts at middle right, up, then down through the center, curving down below the midline before arcing back up to reach middle left. An S-shape appears on screen to highlight this path.
3:49 The Sun blob becomes a very large and yellow blob and the timelapse freezes to show a large inset with most of the Sun, visible as a mottled and hazy disk. A bright area at the 3 o’clock position brightens much more, with rays of diffraction spikes extending outward. The inset closes and the Fermi timelapse footage continues.
4:10 A new inset opens with an illustration of Earth. A green shape much like a shallow dish follows an orbit angled a little above and below the equator. The dish, Fermi’s field of view, makes one orbit tipped upward and then makes another orbit tipped downward.
4:40 More and more often portions of the screen, including the band, will go fainter or go completely dark. They change with a somewhat rhythmic, pulsing feel.
5:53 The image freezes at August 2, 2022.
5:58 The mostly black view we have been watching fades into a view with a similar, but more detailed, yellow and orange band across the center. In this cumulative image of the gamma-ray sky, the regions above and below appear in a mottled blue with all regions growing in size at the top and bottom due to increased distortion from the map projection used.
6:15 The NASA logo appears