Of the several
thousand
pulsars that have been discovered by radio telescopes over the past
forty
years, only a handful were known to emit gamma-ray pulsations before
the launch
last June, 2008, of the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space
Telescope. Almost as soon as Fermi
was turned on,
new gamma-ray pulsar discoveries began, and a year later the number of
known
gamma-ray pulsars has increased by nearly a factor of ten.
A sizeable fraction of these have been
discovered through their gamma-ray pulsations alone.
The pulsations had not been seen before at
any other wavelength but are coming from the locations of many
previously
unidentified Galactic gamma-ray sources.
For the first time, millisecond pulsars have been confirmed as
powerful
sources of gamma-ray emission, and a whole population of these objects
is seen with
the Fermi
Large Area Telescope. From these
new discoveries, we have learned
that the gamma rays are not emitted in narrow
“lighthouse” beams but in very large fan beams that can be seen
from
virtually all directions. Gamma-ray
observations may thus provide a unique capability to uncover hidden
stellar
remnants.