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Swift

Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory

Active Mission

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is a satellite that studies gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, and other cosmic objects and events. Swift houses three multiwavelength telescopes, collecting data in visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light.

Type

Space telescope

Nasa lead

Goddard

Launch

Nov. 20, 2004

wavelength

Multiwavelength
Featured Story

NASA’s Swift Studies Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes

Scientists using observations from NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have discovered, for the first time, the signal from a pair…

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Latest Swift News

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NASA’s Swift Studies Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes

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Tyler Parsotan Takes a Long Look at the Transient Universe with NASA’s…

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Featured Video

A Day in the Life of a NASA Satellite Team

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is on the hunt to uncover the mystery of the universe’s most powerful explosions: gamma-ray bursts. These extreme events are some of the farthest objects we’ve ever detected and are associated with some of the most dramatic events in our cosmos, like the collapse of massive stars or the mergers of two neutron stars. In celebration of fifteen years of excellent science, join a Swift scientist as she describes a typical day for the team.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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M101, or the Pinwheel galaxy, glitters in blues and reds in this image captured by Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope.

Download high-resolution images and videos related to Swift.

Swift Looks at Galaxy M101

Swift UVOT image of galaxy M101
This Swift image of galaxy M101 captured by its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope combines light from a number of filters. Each filter is sensitive to light of a different color, ranging from ultraviolet light beyond the range of human eyesight through the blue to yellow portion of the visible spectrum. Here, the shortest wavelength ultraviolet rays are represented as blue, and the longest visible light wavelengths are red. The image shows that hot young stars are being formed in abundance in M101, especially in the spiral arms of the galaxy, where they show up in ultraviolet light. The central regions of the galaxy have more cool, old stars, which appear red in the picture. A number of foreground stars, located in our own galaxy, also reveal themselves by their red color.
NASA/Swift

An illustration of NASA's Swift observatory.

Swift Launch Press Kit

Apr 23, 2025

PDF (3.03 MB)

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