Play Photon Pile-up!

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Did you know that light comes in little packages?

They are called photons. Photons act like particles.

In this game, five different kinds of photons will be shining on your Photon Pile-up "telescope:"

  1. Microwave photons
  2. Infrared photons
  3. Visible light photons
  4. Ultraviolet photons
  5. X-ray photons

Your game telescope is like the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or GALEX for short. It was especially good at seeing ultraviolet photons.

Screenshot from game.
Click here to play.

In Photon Pile-up you get extra points for piling up three touching ultraviolet photons. These are colored purple in the game. You get fewer points for piling three touching photons of other single colors. But don't let the photons pile up too high! Keep the GALEX "telescope" spinning.

Light also acts like waves. To learn more about this, you might want to pay another visit to the Land of the Magic Windows or go again to play in the light waves on "What is a laser?"



Drawing of waves of the five kinds of light in the Photon Pile-up game.

Of the kinds of light in the Photon Pile-up game, microwaves are the longest waves and X-rays are the shortest waves.

article last updated October 24, 2019
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A very special telescope

Our eyes are lousy at detecting any kind of photons except visible light photons. Thank goodness we have space telescopes that can see all kinds of light!

GALEX image of spiral galaxy.

This image captured by the GALEX telescope in ultraviolet light shows beautiful spiral galaxy M81. M81 is about the same size and brightness as our own Milky Way Galaxy.

GALEX could see, for example, that new stars are forming in a particular region of space. It could see things like the strange, long tail of the star Mira, invisible before astronomers discovered it in a GALEX image.