First light from the Vela pulsar with the Fermi Gamma‐ray Space Telescope

The Fermi Gamma‐ray Space Telescope, launched in June 2008, is an international space mission entirely devoted to the study of the high‐energy gamma rays from the Universe. The main instrument aboard Fermi is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), a pair conversion telescope equipped with the state‐of‐the art in gamma‐ray detectors technology. Thanks to its large field of view and effective area, combined with its excellent timing capability, Fermi‐LAT is a perfect instrument for probing physics of gamma‐ray emission in pulsars. LAT is expected to discover tens of new pulsars, both radio‐loud and radio‐quiet (Geminga‐like). Moreover, LAT will observe with unprecedented statistics the brightest pulsars, investigating the details of magnetospheric emission. The first two months of the mission have been focused on the commissioning and first light, during which the LAT firmly detected the six previously known EGRET gamma‐ray pulsars. One of the main sources of interest during our first light observations has been the Vela pulsar, the brightest persistent source in the whole gamma‐ray sky. Thanks to its brightness, the Vela pulsar is an ideal candidate for calibrating the LAT and testing its performance. In addition, observations of Vela will help answer many questions related to the physics of pulsar emission processes. We present here some recent results obtained by the LAT on the Vela pulsar, using high‐quality timing solutions provided by radio observations carried out within the Fermi pulsar radio timing campaign.