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NGC 7469 is a spiral galaxy, seen face on, that contains a growing supermassive black hole. Chandra shows hot gas near the black hole. X-rays from Chandra (purple); optical/IR from Hubble (red, green, and blue); infrared image from Webb (red, green, and blue)
Visual Description:
This composite image features a spiral galaxy, viewed face on. Here, two blue and red speckled arms spiral around a black hole at the heart of the galaxy, known as NGC 7469. Faint clouds of pale blue mist trace the lines of the speckled arms, muting the colors in the image. Here, the black hole at the center of the galaxy is represented by a bright white dot encircled by a mottled, neon purple ring. This dot and ring represent X-ray emission from hot gas around the black hole. Due to the perfect face-on angle, six red diffraction spikes radiate from the glowing black hole, like laser beams.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Xiamen Univ./X. Xu; Optical/Infrared: NASA/ESA/UVA, NRAO, SUNY at Stony Brook/A. S. Evans, Hubble Heritage–ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/L. Armus, A. S. Evans; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major
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A rapidly feeding black hole at the center of a dwarf galaxy in the early universe, shown in this artist's concept, may hold important clues to the evolution of supermassive black holes in general.
Using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole just 1.5 billion years after the big bang. The black hole is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole's “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early universe.
Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the universe's evolution. It's difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate so soon after the birth of the universe, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early universe.
The black hole, called LID-568, was hidden among thousands of objects in the Chandra X-ray Observatory's COSMOS legacy survey, a catalog resulting from some 4.6 million seconds of Chandra observations. This population of galaxies is very bright in the X-ray light, but invisible in optical and previous near-infrared observations. By following up with Webb, astronomers could use the observatory's unique infrared sensitivity to detect these faint counterpart emissions, which led to the discovery of the black hole.
Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/M. Zamani
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Read more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3059, which lies about 57 million light-years from Earth. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 collected the data in May 2024 as part of an observing program that studied a number of galaxies. All of the observations used the same range of filters: partially transparent materials that allow only very specific wavelengths of light to pass through.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
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Astronomers nicknamed this region of star formation the “Cosmic Cliffs,” which is found in the nearby Carina Nebula. X-rays from young stars in two clusters are detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. X-rays from Chandra (purple); infrared from Webb (yellow, green, cyan, and blue)
Visual Description:
This composite image features two star clusters, viewed through a churning tunnel of golden cloud. The cloud creates a border around the entire image, like a thick swirling smoke ring. Beyond it, in the open center, is a vast field of neon purple specks. These specks are young stars observed by Chandra. Within the central field, two cluster groupings are suggested by separate swirls of faint, steel blue mist. One sits near our upper right. The other is near the bottom left, partially obscured by the golden yellow ring cloud.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Ludwig Maximilian Univ./T. Preibisch et al.; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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A quarter of a century ago, NASA released the “first light” images from the agency’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This introduction to the world of Chandra’s high-resolution X-ray imaging capabilities includes this new sonification that features the spectacular cosmic vista of 30 Doradus, one of the largest and brightest regions of star formation close to the Milky Way. This sonification combines X-rays from Chandra with infrared data from Webb.
As the scan moves from left to right across the image, the volume heard again corresponds to the brightness seen. Light toward the top of the image is mapped to higher pitched notes. X-rays from Chandra, which reveal gas that has been superheated by shock waves generated by the winds from massive stars, are heard as airy synthesizer sounds. Meanwhile, Webb’s infrared data show cooler gas that provides the raw ingredients for future stars. These data are mapped to a range of sounds including soft, low musical pitches (red regions), a wind-like sound (white regions), piano-like synthesizer notes indicating very bright stars, and a rain-stick sound for stars in a central cluster.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JWST ERO Production Team; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
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To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is releasing 25 never-before-seen views of a wide range of cosmic objects.
These images, which all include data from Chandra, demonstrate how X-ray astronomy explores all corners of the universe. By combining X-rays from Chandra with other space-based observatories and telescopes on the ground, as many of these images do, astronomers can tackle the biggest questions and investigate long-standing mysteries across the cosmos.
On July 23, 1999, the space shuttle Columbia launched into orbit carrying Chandra, which was then the heaviest payload ever carried by the shuttle. With Commander Eileen Collins at the helm, the astronauts aboard Columbia successfully deployed Chandra into its highly elliptical orbit that takes it nearly one-third of the distance to the Moon.
The Cat’s Paw is a nebula where stars are forming in the Milky Way galaxy. X-rays from Chandra show populations of young stars. X-rays from Chandra (purple); optical and H-alpha from ESO/MPG (red, green, and blue); infrared from Spitzer (red, green, and blue)
Credit: X-ray: NASA/SAO/CXC; Optical and H-alpha: ESO/MPG; Infrared: NASA/JPL-CalTech/Spitzer; Image Processing: J. Major
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For the first time, astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope to study the well-known supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). As described in our latest press release, this work has helped explain an unusual structure in the debris from the destroyed star called the “Green Monster,” first discovered in Webb data in April 2023. The research has also uncovered new details about the explosion that created Cas A about 340 years ago, from Earth’s perspective.
A new composite image contains X-rays from Chandra (blue), infrared data from Webb (red, green, blue), and optical data from Hubble (red and white). The outer parts of the image also include infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (red, green and blue). To see the outline of the "Green Monster," go to this link
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/CalTech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand
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Planets can force their host stars to act younger than their age, according to a new study of multiple systems using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This may be the best evidence to date that some planets apparently slow down the aging process for their host stars.
While the anti-aging property of “hot Jupiters” (that is, gas giant exoplanets that orbit a star at Mercury’s distance or closer) has been seen before, this result is the first time it has been systematically documented, providing the strongest test yet of this exotic phenomenon.
A hot Jupiter can potentially influence its host star by tidal forces, causing the star to spin more quickly than if it did not have such a planet. This more rapid rotation can make the host star more active and produce more X-rays, signs that are generally associated with stellar youth.
This image shows a labeled X-ray image of the HD189733 and WASP-77 systems.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Potsdam Univ./N. Ilic et al.
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In the year 1181 a rare supernova explosion appeared in the night sky, staying visible for 185 consecutive days. Historical records show that the supernova looked like a temporary 'star' in the constellation Cassiopeia shining as bright as Saturn.
Ever since, scientists have tried to find the supernova's remnant. At first it was thought that this could be the nebula around the pulsar — the dense core of a collapse star — named 3C 58. However closer investigations revealed that the pulsar is older than supernova 1181.
In the last decade, another contender was discovered; Pa 30 is a nearly circular nebula with a central star in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is pictured here combining images from several telescopes. This composite image uses data across the electromagnetic spectrum and shows a spectacular new view of the supernova remnant. This allows us to marvel at the same object that appeared in our ancestors' night sky more than 800 years ago.
X-ray observations by ESA's XMM-Newton (blue) show the full extent of the nebula and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (cyan) pinpoints its central source. The nebula is barely visible in optical light but shines bright in infrared light, collected by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer (red and pink). Interestingly, the radial structure in the image consists of heated sulfur that glows in visible light, observed with the ground-based Hiltner 2.4 m telescope at the MDM Observatory (green) in Arizona, USA, as do the stars in the background by Pan-STARRS (white) in Hawaii, USA.
Credit: X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/U. Manitoba/C. Treturik, (XMM-Newton) ESA/C. Treturik; Optical: (Pan-STARRS) NOIRLab/MDM/Dartmouth/R. Fesen; Infrared: (WISE) NASA/JPL/Caltech/; Image Processing: Univ. of Manitoba/Gilles Ferrand and Jayanne English
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This composite image of the Manatee Nebula captures the jet emanating from SS 433, a black hole devouring material embedded in the supernova remnant which spawned it. Radio emissions from the remnant are blue-green, whereas X-rays combined from IXPE, XMM-Newton, and Chandra are highlighted in bright blue-purple and pinkish-white against a backdrop of infrared data in red. The black hole emits twin jets of matter traveling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light, distorting the remnant’s shape. The jets become bright about 100 light years away from the black hole, where particles are accelerated to very high energies by shocks within the jet. The IXPE data shows that the magnetic field, which plays a key role in how particles are accelerated, is aligned parallel to the jet – aiding our understanding of how astrophysical jets accelerate these particles to high energies.
Credit: X-ray: (IXPE): NASA/MSFC/IXPE; (Chandra): NASA/CXC/SAO; (XMM): ESA/XMM-Newton; IR: NASA/JPL/Caltech/WISE; Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/VLA/B. Saxton. (IR/Radio image created with data from M. Goss, et al.); Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk & K.Arcand
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Read more about NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)
The planetary nebula Abell 30, (a.k.a. A30), is located about 5,500 light years from Earth. Close-up views of A30 show X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope. A planetary nebula is formed in the late stage of the evolution of a sun-like star, after it expands to become a red giant. In the case of A30, a planetary nebula formed but then the star briefly reverted to being a red giant. The evolution of the planetary nebula then restarted, making it reborn, a special phase of evolution that is rarely seen.
Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/IAA-CSIC/M.Guerrero et al); Inset Optical (NASA/STScI)
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NASA researchers have discovered a perplexing case of a black hole that appears to be “tipped over,” rotating in an unexpected direction relative to the galaxy surrounding it. That galaxy, called NGC 5084, has been known for years, but the sideways secret of its central black hole lay hidden in old data archives. The discovery was made possible by new image analysis techniques developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley to take a fresh look at archival data from the agency’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Using the new methods, astronomers at Ames unexpectedly found four long plumes of plasma – hot, charged gas – emanating from NGC 5084. One pair of plumes extends above and below the plane of the galaxy. A surprising second pair, forming an “X” shape with the first, lies in the galaxy plane itself. Hot gas plumes are not often spotted in galaxies, and typically only one or two are present.
The method revealing such unexpected characteristics for galaxy NGC 5084 was developed by Ames research scientist Alejandro Serrano Borlaff and colleagues to detect low-brightness X-ray emissions in data from the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope. What they saw in the Chandra data seemed so strange that they immediately looked to confirm it, digging into the data archives of other telescopes and requesting new observations from two powerful ground-based observatories.
This image shows the structure of galaxy NGC 5084, with data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory overlaid on a visible-light image of the galaxy. Chandra’s data, shown in purple, revealed four plumes of hot gas emanating from a supermassive black hole rotating “tipped over” at the galaxy’s core.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC, A. S. Borlaff, P. Marcum et al.; Optical full image: M. Pugh, B. Diaz; Image Processing: NASA/USRA/L. Proudfit
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Most stars form in collections, called clusters or associations, that include very massive stars. These giant stars send out large amounts of high-energy radiation, which can disrupt relatively fragile disks of dust and gas that are in the process of coalescing to form new planets.
A team of astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, in combination with ultraviolet, optical, and infrared data, to show where some of the most treacherous places in a star cluster may be, where planets' chances to form are diminished.
The target of the observations was Cygnus OB2, which is the nearest large cluster of stars to our Sun — at a distance of about 4,600 light-years. The cluster contains hundreds of massive stars as well as thousands of lower-mass stars. The team used long Chandra observations pointing at different regions of Cygnus OB2, and the resulting set of images were then stitched together into one large image.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Drake et al, IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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Planetary nebula HB 5, an end phase of a Sun-like star, was discovered by famous astronomer Edwin Hubble. X-rays from hot gas in HB 5 are detected by Chandra. X-rays from Chandra (blue and white); optical from Hubble (red, purple, blue); radio image from ALMA (yellow and white)
Visual Description:
This composite image of the planetary nebula HB 5 resembles a bulbous bow tie in mottled purples. This is a Sun-like star towards the end of its life. At the heart of the nebula, or the brilliant golden white knot of the bow tie, is a recent mass ejection from the dying star. To its right and left are matching bulbous spheres of churning purple gas. Each sphere of gas is several times larger than the exploding knot between them. Also present in the nebula are faint clouds in neon blue and mustard yellow. The blue cloud, most prominent at our upper left, represents X-rays observed by Chandra. The mustard yellow cloud, which highlights the star’s recent mass ejection, represents carbon monoxide gas observed in radio waves by ALMA.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Radio: NSF/ESO/NRAO/ALMA/RIT (P. Moraga Baez, J. Kastner); Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, J. Major
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NGC 3532 (also called the “Wishing Well Cluster”) is a cluster of middle-aged stars — about 300 million years old — that covers nearly twice the size of the full Moon in the sky. X-rays from Chandra (purple and white); optical from ESO/MPG 2.2m (red, green, and blue)
Visual Description:
This image of the NGC 3532 star cluster resembles a black canvas stippled with thousands of drops of colorful paint, flicked from an artist’s brush. From this vantage point, the stars range from minuscule to merely tiny. They range in color from white and golden yellow, to oranges, reds, blues and purples. Some of the stars have white cores with colorful outlines, while others gleam and have large, translucent, outer glows. The purple and white stars are those detected in X-rays by Chandra. A faint, hazy, brick orange cloud streaks across the middle of the image.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: ESO; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major
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A colorful, festive image shows different types of light containing the remains of not one, but at least two, exploded stars. This supernova remnant is known as 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B for short) and is part of a larger region of space where stars have been continuously forming for the past 8 to 10 million years. It is a complex landscape of dark clouds of gas, young stars, high-energy shocks, and superheated gas, located 160,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The new image of 30 Dor B was made by combining X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), optical data from the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile (orange and cyan), and infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (red). Optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was also added in black and white to highlight sharp features in the image.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/HST; Infrared: NASA/JPL/CalTech/SST; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, N. Wolk, K. Arcand
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Observed by @NASAChandraXray since 2001, pulsar wind nebula MSH 15-52 is formed by particles flung away from a rapidly spinning stellar corpse. More recently, our IXPE telescope stared at this creepy sight for about 17 days. IXPE mapped the nebula’s magnetic field, helping us learn more about the “bones” that form its basic shape and the pulsar swirling at its core.
Want this ghoulish image to haunt your lock screen? Check out today’s story or the Wallpapers highlight on @NASAUniverse!
Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./R. Romani et al. (Chandra); NASA/MSFC (IXPE); Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DECaPS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt
Music: “Castle of Doom,” Richard Breakspear [BMI], Universal Production Music
Video description: This video layers X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra and IXPE telescopes, revealing the eerie shape of pulsar wind nebula MSH 15-52. First, we see a starfield glittering with countless blue-white objects, courtesy of infrared data from the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2). Next, a wispy purple hand appears, captured by IXPE (purple) and Chandra (blue-white). The bright region at the base of the palm is the pulsar. The fingers are reaching toward orange clouds in the surrounding supernova remnant, revealed by Chandra’s low-energy X-ray data. Finally, IXPE’s polarization measurements add small colorful lines mapping the direction of the local magnetic field — orange bars mark the most precise measurements, followed by cyan and blue bars. The “hand” fades out, and the sequence repeats.
#NASA #NASAMarshall #NASAHalloween #NASAIXPE #NASAChandra #Nebula #Pulsar #Xrays #Halloween #astrophysics #pulsar
This supernova remnant, the debris from an exploded star, shows a bright nebula in the center surrounded by a much larger diffuse cloud of X-rays. X-rays from Chandra (purple and orange); infrared from Spitzer (yellow); radio from VLA (yellow)
Visual Description:
This composite image depicts a supernova remnant, which has a bright nebula at its core, surrounded by a cloud of X-rays detected with Chandra. Here, the nebula is represented by a small golden yellow dot at the center of the image. The dot appears to hover inside a tangle of light blue veins, which resemble a lightning cluster. Enveloping the nebula is the massive x-ray cloud, which occupies much of the image. Round in shape, the diffuse X-ray cloud is shown here in mottled neon purple. It represents the debris from the star destroyed in the supernova explosion.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: NASA/JPL/CalTech/Spitzer; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare
#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #NASAChandra #NASA #ESA
On the edge of the universe 🌌
Astronomers nicknamed this region of star formation the “Cosmic Cliffs,” which is found in the nearby Carina Nebula located about 7,600 light-years from Earth. This image combines X-ray light from Chandra with infrared light from Webb, and was released as part of the #Chandra25 celebration.
Visual Description:
This composite image features two star clusters, viewed through a churning tunnel of golden cloud. The cloud creates a border around the entire image, like a thick swirling smoke ring. Beyond it, in the open center, is a vast field of neon purple specks. These specks are young stars observed by Chandra. Within the central field, two cluster groupings are suggested by separate swirls of faint, steel blue mist. One sits near our upper right. The other is near the bottom left, partially obscured by the golden yellow ring cloud.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Ludwig Maximilian Univ./T. Preibisch et al.; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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This image of the supernova RCW 86 shows X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Astronomers used these data to determine that a Type Ia supernova explosion, which was witnessed nearly 2,000 years ago by Chinese astronomers, was the source of the RCW 86 remnant seen today. Type Ia supernovas are created when an otherwise stable white dwarf is pushed beyond the brink of stability when a companion star dumps material onto it.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO & ESA
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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken its first new images since changing to an alternate operating mode that uses one gyro.
The spacecraft returned to science operations June 14 after being offline for several weeks due to an issue with one of its gyroscopes (gyros), which help control and orient the telescope.
This new image features NGC 1546, a nearby galaxy in the constellation Dorado. The galaxy’s orientation gives us a good view of dust lanes from slightly above and backlit by the galaxy’s core. This dust absorbs light from the core, reddening it and making the dust appear rusty-brown. The core itself glows brightly in a yellowish light indicating an older population of stars. Brilliant-blue regions of active star formation sparkle through the dust. Several background galaxies also are visible, including an edge-on spiral just to the left of NGC 1546.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, David Thilker (JHU)
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This image of galaxy cluster SPT-CLJ0106-5943 represents a sample of galaxy clusters that are part of the largest and most complete study to learn what triggers stars to form in the universe’s biggest galaxies. Clusters of galaxies are the largest objects in the universe held together by gravity and contain huge amounts of hot gas seen in X-rays. This research, made using Chandra and other telescopes, showed that the conditions for stellar conception in these exceptionally massive galaxies have not changed over the last ten billion years. In this image, X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown along with optical data from Hubble Space Telescope.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/M. Calzadilla el al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk & J. Major
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This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the broad and sweeping spiral galaxy NGC 4731. It lies in the constellation Virgo and is located 43 million light-years from Earth. This highly detailed image uses data collected from six different filters. The abundance of color illustrates the galaxy's billowing clouds of gas, dark dust bands, bright pink star-forming regions and, most obviously, the long, glowing bar with trailing arms.
Barred spiral galaxies outnumber both regular spirals and elliptical galaxies put together, numbering around 60% of all galaxies. The visible bar structure is a result of orbits of stars and gas in the galaxy lining up, forming a dense region that individual stars move in and out of over time. This is the same process that maintains a galaxy's spiral arms, but it is somewhat more mysterious for bars: spiral galaxies seem to form bars in their centers as they mature, which helps explain the large number of bars we see today, but they can also lose them if the accumulated mass along the bar grows unstable. The orbital patterns and the gravitational interactions within a galaxy that sustain the bar also transport matter and energy into it, fueling star formation. Indeed, the observing program studying NGC 4731 seeks to investigate this flow of matter in galaxies.
Beyond the bar, the spiral arms of NGC 4731 stretch out far past the confines of this close-in Hubble view. Astronomers think the galaxy’s elongated arms are the result of gravitational interactions with other, nearby galaxies in the Virgo cluster.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the jewel-bright spiral galaxy NGC 4689, which lies 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation has the distinction of being the only one of the 88 constellations officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as one named after the historical figure, Queen Berenice II of Egypt. The Latin word ‘coma’ references her hair, which means that NGC 4689 lies in the hair of a queen. Some people of Berenice’s time would have meant this quite literally, as the story goes that her court astronomer thought that a missing lock of Berenice’s hair had been catasterised (a word meaning ‘placed amongst the stars’) by the gods: hence the name of the constellation, Coma Berenices.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee, and the PHANGS-HST Team
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Astronomers have discovered one of the most powerful eruptions from a black hole ever recorded in the system known as SDSS J1531+3414 (SDSS J1531 for short). As explained in our press release, this mega-explosion billions of years ago may help explain the formation of a striking pattern of star clusters around two massive galaxies, resembling "beads on a string."
SDSS J1531 is a massive galaxy cluster containing hundreds of individual galaxies and huge reservoirs of hot gas and dark matter. At the center of SDSS J1531, which is located about 3.8 billion light-years away, two of the cluster's largest galaxies are colliding with each other.
Astronomers used several telescopes to study SDSS J1531 including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope. This composite image shows SDSS J1531 in X-rays from Chandra (blue and purple) that have been combined with radio data from LOFAR (dark pink) as well as an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope (appearing as yellow and white). The inset gives a close-in view of the center of SDSS J1531 in optical light, showing the two large galaxies and a set of 19 large clusters of stars, called superclusters, stretching across the middle. The image shows these star clusters are arranged in an 'S' formation that resembles beads on a string.
The multiwavelength data provides signs of an ancient, titanic eruption in SDSS J1531, which a team of researchers think was responsible for creation of the 19 star clusters. Their argument is that an extremely powerful jet from the supermassive black holes in the center of one of the large galaxies pushed the surrounding hot gas away from the black hole, creating a gigantic cavity. The evidence for a cavity comes from "wings" of bright X-ray emission, seen with Chandra, tracing dense gas near the center of SDSS J1531. These wings are the edge of the cavity and the less dense gas in between is part of the cavity. LOFAR shows radio waves from the remains of the jet's energetic particles filling in the giant cavity. These features are highlighted in a labeled version of the image.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/O. Omoruyi et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/G. Tremblay et al.; Radio: ASTRON/LOFAR; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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By combining data from NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE, shown in light blue), Chandra (purple), and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (yellow), researchers are probing the Vela pulsar, the aftermath of a star that collapsed and exploded and now sends a remarkable storm of particles and energy into space. IXPE shows the average orientation of the X-rays with respect to the jet in this image.
Credit: NASA/CXC/UMass/Q.D. Wang; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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Read more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory
Read more about NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)
Even matter ejected by black holes can run into objects in the dark. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found an unusual mark from a giant black hole's powerful jet striking an unidentified object in its path.
The discovery was made in a galaxy called Centaurus A (Cen A), located about 12 million light-years from Earth. Astronomers have long studied Cen A because it has a supermassive black hole in its center sending out spectacular jets that stretch out across the entire galaxy. The black hole launches this jet of high-energy particles not from inside the black hole, but from intense gravitational and magnetic fields around it.
The image shows low-energy X-rays seen by Chandra represented in pink, medium-energy X-rays in purple, and the highest-energy X-rays in blue.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/D. Bogensberger et al; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk;
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New 3D models of objects in space have been released by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. These 3D models allow people to explore — and print — examples of stars in the early and end stages of their lives. They also provide scientists with new avenues to investigate scientific questions and find insights about the objects they represent. Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is the subject of one of the models. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers uncovered a mysterious feature within the remnant, nicknamed the “Green Monster,” alongside a puzzling network of ejecta filaments forming a web of oxygen-rich material. When combined with X-rays from Chandra, the data helped astronomers shed light on the origin of the Green Monster and revealed new insights into the explosion that created Cas A about 340 years ago, from Earth’s perspective.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO, NASA/JPL/Caltech/NuStar; Optical: NASA/STScI/HST; IR: NASA/STScI/JWST, NASA/JPL/CalTech/SST; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, N. Wolk, and K. Arcand;
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This image of NGC 281 shows X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The high-mass stars in NGC 281 drive many aspects of their galactic environment through powerful winds flowing from their surfaces and intense radiation that heats surrounding gas, "boiling it away" into interstellar space. This process results in the formation of large columns of gas and dust, as seen on the left side of the image. These structures likely contain newly forming stars. The eventual deaths of massive stars as supernovas will also seed the galaxy with material and energy.
Credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk
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A new collection of images features data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. These objects have been observed in invisible light — including X-rays, infrared, and radio — by some of the most powerful telescopes. Each layer represents data that has been assigned colors that the human eye can perceive, allowing us to explore these cosmic entities.
Here is an image of the Kepler supernova remnant, which is the remains of a white dwarf that exploded after undergoing a thermonuclear explosion. Chandra (blue) shows a powerful blast wave that ripped through space after the detonation, while infrared data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope (red) and optical light from Hubble (cyan and yellow) show the debris of the destroyed star.
Credit: NASA/CXC/UMass/Q.D. Wang; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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The youngest member of an important class of objects called X-ray binaries were found using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Australia Compact Telescope Array. X-ray binaries consist of a dense object -- either a black hole or a neutron star -- in orbit with a star like the Sun. Researchers found that the neutron star in Circinus X-1 is less than 4,600 years old, making it much younger than any other X-ray binary known in the Milky Way. This discovery allows astronomers to study a critical phase after a supernova explosion and the birth of a neutron star.
A new study shows that the X-ray binary called Circinus X-1 is less than 4,600 years old, making it the youngest ever seen. Astronomers have detected hundreds of X-ray binaries throughout the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies. However, these older X-ray binaries only reveal information about what happens later in the evolution of these systems.
This image from 2013 shows the X-ray data from Chandra.
Credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison/S.Heinz et al;
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Pulsar wind nebulas like MSH 15-52 are clouds of energetic particles, producing X-rays, that are driven away from dead collapsed stars. X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (gold and blue); infrared from the Dark Energy Camera KPNO Blanco 4.0m (red and blue)
In this composite image, a pulsar, a pulsar wind nebula, and a low energy X-ray cloud combine to create an uncanny scene of a skeletal hand preparing to grab a glowing ember. The hand reaches up from the bottom of the image, the ghostly blue flesh and white bones representing pulsar wind nebula X-rays observed by Chandra. A bright white spot in the wrist is the pulsar itself. Just beyond the hand’s fingertips, near our upper right, is a mottled yellow and orange shape that appears to glow from within. This is the low energy X-ray cloud observed by Chandra.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NOIRLab/DECam; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt
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Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found a galaxy cluster has two streams of superheated gas crossing one another. This result shows that crossing the streams may lead to the creation of new structure.
Researchers have discovered an enormous, comet-like tail of hot gas — spanning over 1.6 million light-years long — trailing behind a galaxy within the galaxy cluster called Zwicky 8338 (Z8338 for short). This tail, spawned as the galaxy had some of its gas stripped off by the hot gas it is hurtling through, has split into two streams.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Xiamen Univ./C. Ge; Optical: DESI collaboration; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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Three new sonifications of images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have been released in conjunction with a new documentary about the project that makes its debut on the NASA+ streaming platform.
Sonification is the process of translating data into sounds. In the case of Chandra and other telescopes, scientific data are collected from space as digital signals that are commonly turned into visual imagery. The sonification project takes these data through another step of mapping the information into sound.
The three new sonifications feature different objects observed by NASA telescopes.
The first is MSH 11-52, a supernova remnant blowing a spectacular cloud of energized particles resembling the shape of a human hand, seen in data from Chandra, NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), and ground-based optical data.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./R. Romani et al. (Chandra); NASA/MSFC (IXPE); Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DECaPS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
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To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is releasing 25 never-before-seen views of a wide range of cosmic objects.
These images, which all include data from Chandra, demonstrate how X-ray astronomy explores all corners of the universe. By combining X-rays from Chandra with other space-based observatories and telescopes on the ground, as many of these images do, astronomers can tackle the biggest questions and investigate long-standing mysteries across the cosmos.
On July 23, 1999, the space shuttle Columbia launched into orbit carrying Chandra, which was then the heaviest payload ever carried by the shuttle. With Commander Eileen Collins at the helm, the astronauts aboard Columbia successfully deployed Chandra into its highly elliptical orbit that takes it nearly one-third of the distance to the Moon.
This image shows the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant that has been observed for more than 2 million seconds since the start of the Chandra mission in 1999. X-rays from Chandra (blue); infrared from Webb (orange, white, and blue).
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/D. Milisavljevic (Purdue Univ.), I. De Looze (UGent), T. Temim (Princeton Univ.); Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major, J. Schmidt and K. Arcand
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Chandra observations of Arp 220 give insight into what happens when two galaxies about the size of the Milky Way collide. X-rays from Chandra (purple); optical and infrared from Hubble (red, green, and blue)
This composite image features an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy, surrounded by a soft, rose-pink cloud of X-ray gas. Named Arp 220, this galaxy is the result of a collision between two galaxies, each about the size of our own Milky Way. Here, a single, bright, golden white dot sits at the center of the image. The rose-pink cloud surrounding the dot appears soft and airy, like cotton candy. Upon close inspection, feint orange veins can be discerned, marbling the X-ray gas cloud seen with Chandra. Surrounding the gas cloud are other distant galaxies and stars, set against the blackness of space. Most are orange or white, and range from tiny specks to small glowing ovals.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare, J. Major
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Hot gas detected by Chandra is being pulled away from this elliptical galaxy as it moves through a galaxy cluster at about 3 million miles per hour. X-rays from Chandra (purple) and XMM-Newton (blue); optical images from Digitized Sky Survey (red, green, and blue) and Palomar (red, green, and blue)
Visual Description:
This composite image features approximately one dozen galaxies, set against a black backdrop dotted with tiny specks of light. Some of the galaxies resemble glowing white dots. Other galaxies resemble disks, or have glowing outer rings. These galaxies are part of a galaxy cluster containing over a thousand galaxies. To our right of center is a large white and pink dot surrounded by a neon purple streak. This is the galaxy M86 traveling through the cluster at about three million miles per hour. The neon purple streak represents hot gas detected with Chandra. This hot gas is being pulled from the traveling galaxy as it collides with hot gas in the cluster.
Credit: X-ray: (Chandra) NASA/CXC/SAO; (XMM) ESA; H-alpha: NoirLab/NSF/KPNO; Optical: SDSS; CalTech/Palomar; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major and K. Arcand
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NASA released three new pieces of cosmic sound Thursday, May 8, 2025, that are associated with the densest and darkest members of our universe: black holes. These scientific productions are sonifications — or translations into sound — of data collected by NASA telescopes in space including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope, and Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE).
In this movement of this black hole composition, listeners can explore a duet. SS 433 is a binary, or double, system about 18,000 light-years away that sings out in X-rays. The two members of SS 433 include a star like our Sun in orbit around a much heavier partner, either a neutron star or a black hole. This orbital dance causes undulations in X-rays that Chandra, IXPE, and ESA’s XMM-Newton telescopes are tuned into. These X-ray notes have been combined with radio and infrared data to provide a backdrop for this celestial waltz. The nebula in radio waves resembles a drifting manatee, and the scan sweeps across from right to left. Light towards the top of the image is mapped to higher-pitch sound, with radio, infrared, and X-ray light mapped to low, medium, and high pitch ranges. Bright background stars are played as water-drop sounds, and the location of the binary system is heard as a plucked sound, pulsing to match the fluctuations due to the orbital dance.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk & K. Arcand; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
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Bone-chilling!
In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays and used them to image the bones in his wife’s hand, kicking off a revolutionary diagnostic tool for medicine. Now two of @NASA’s X-ray space telescopes have combined their imaging powers to unveil the magnetic field “bones” of a remarkable hand-shaped structure in space.
@nasachandraxray and #IXPE have both observed this pulsar wind nebula MSH 15-52, providing insights into how these objects are formed.
Image description: A composite image of a pulsar wind nebula, which strongly resembles a ghostly purple hand with sparkling fingertips. The three longest fingertips of the hand-shape point toward our upper right, or 1:00 on a clock face. There, a small, mottled, orange and yellow cloud appears to sparkle or glow like embers. This orange cloud is part of the remains of the supernova explosion that created the pulsar. The backdrop of stars was captured in infrared light.
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Westerlund 1 is the biggest and closest “super” star cluster to Earth. New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, in combination with other NASA telescopes, is helping astronomers delve deeper into this galactic factory where stars are vigorously being produced.
This is the first data to be publicly released from a project called the Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey, or EWOCS, led by astronomers from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Palermo. As part of EWOCS, Chandra observed Westerlund 1 for about 12 days in total.
Currently, only a handful of stars form in our galaxy each year, but in the past the situation was different. The Milky Way used to produce many more stars, likely hitting its peak of churning out dozens or hundreds of stars per year about 10 billion years ago and then gradually declining ever since. Astronomers think that most of this star formation took place in massive clusters of stars, known as “super star clusters,” like Westerlund 1. These are young clusters of stars that contain more than 10,000 times the mass of the Sun. Westerlund 1 is between about 3 million and 5 million years old.
This new image shows the new deep Chandra data along with previously released data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The X-rays detected by Chandra show young stars (mostly represented as white and pink) as well as diffuse heated gas throughout the cluster (colored pink, green, and blue, in order of increasing temperatures for the gas). Many of the stars picked up by Hubble appear as yellow and blue dots.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/M. Guarcello et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare
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Galaxy clusters like MACS J0035 are the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity. They contain huge amounts of hot gas that produces X-rays seen with X-ray telescopes like NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
This composite image features dozens of tiny golden specks, each a distinct galaxy. The cluster, known as MACS J0035, is surrounded by a hazy, purple, cloud of hot gas detected by Chandra. From this distance, most of the galaxies in the cluster resemble glowing specks and very short streaks. However, upon close inspection, some of the oblong specks and streaks are revealed to have spiral arms. The X-rays from Chandra are in purple, while the optical light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is seen in gold.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major
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There are several clouds of superheated gas, seen by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, that are merging in the Abell 2125 galaxy cluster. X-rays from Chandra (purple and white); optical from Kitt Peak (gold)
Visual Description:
In this composite image of the Abell 2125 galaxy cluster, several clouds of superheated gas surround a bright, gleaming galaxy. Here, the entire image is speckled with glowing golden yellow and neon purple dots, individual galaxies within the cluster. At the center of the frame is the largest and brightest dot, a golden galaxy emitting four diffraction spikes. Surrounding this galaxy are translucent neon purple gas clouds, representing X-rays observed by Chandra. Faint pockets of X-ray gas are found throughout the image, but the most prominent clouds flank the central galaxy at our upper left and lower right.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NSF/NOIRLab/KPNO/F. Owen; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major, K. Arcand
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SNR 0509-67.5 is a supernova remnant located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way about 160,000 light years away. This 2010 Chandra image of SNR 0509 shows soft green and blue hues of heated material from the X-ray data surrounded by the glowing pink optical shell which shows the ambient gas being shocked by the expanding blast wave from the supernova. Ripples in the shell's appearance coincide with brighter areas of the X-ray data.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Hughes et al
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When astronomers discovered the galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102-4915 in 2012 with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes, they nicknamed it "El Gordo" (Spanish for the "Fat One") because of its gigantic mass. Scientists estimate that El Gordo contains as much as 3 million billion (3,000,000,000,000,000) times the mass of the Sun. Thanks to its heft, El Gordo acts as a natural lens, distorting the light from more distant objects behind it through a process known as gravitational lensing.
A new composite image of El Gordo shows the diffuse, superheated gas in the cluster observed in X-rays from Chandra (blue) that have been combined with a new infrared image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). Webb's image shows galaxies in El Gordo plus background galaxies located further away from Earth. El Gordo is located about 7.3 billion light-years from Earth and the background galaxies are at a range of different distances including several that are 12.3 billion light-years from Earth. The appearance of some of the background galaxies has been distorted into a variety of unusual and highly elongated shapes because of gravitational lensing by the cluster.
The X-ray image of El Gordo reveals a distinct cometary appearance. Along with optical data, astronomers reported in 2012 that this shape implies El Gordo is, in fact, the site of two galaxy clusters that ran into one another at several million miles per hour. The same study also used Chandra and other observatories to show that El Gordo is the most massive, and produces the most X-rays, of any known galaxy cluster at its distance or beyond.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J. Hughes et al.; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA, J.M. Diego (IFCA), B.Frye (Univ. of Arizona), P.Kamieneski, T.Carleton & R.Windhorst (ASU); Image processing: X-ray: L. Frattare; J. Major, K.Arcand (SAO). Infrared: A.Pagan (STScI), J.Summers (ASU), J.C.J.D'Silva (UWA), A.M.Koekemoer (STScI), A.Robotham (UWA), R.Windhorst (ASU)
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Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. Approximately 160 million light years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon. The black holes are located near the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3393. Separated by only 490 light years, the black holes are likely the remnant of a merger of two galaxies of unequal mass a billion or more years ago. This 2011 image of NGC 3393 show X-rays from Chandra.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/G.Fabbiano et al;
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Three new sonifications of images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have been released. Sonification is the process of translating data into sounds. In the case of Chandra and other telescopes, scientific data are collected from space as digital signals that are commonly turned into visual imagery. The sonification project takes these data through another step of mapping the information into sound.
The first sonification, IC 443 is a supernova remnant, or the debris of an exploded star, which astronomers have nicknamed the Jellyfish Nebula. A visual composite image of IC 443 includes X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and German ROSAT X-ray telescope (blue) along with radio data from the NSF’s Very Large Array (green) and optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey (red). The sonification of IC 443 begins with a top-down scan as the brightness of the data is correlated to the volume of the sound. The sounds are mapped to colors in the image with red light being heard as lower pitches, the green as medium, and the blue light as the higher pitches. This creates notes that sweep up and down in pitch continuously. Several colors are isolated and control the volume of sustained tones with red controlling the lowest note and white controlling the highest note. The background stars in the optical image have been converted to water drop sounds in the sonification.
Started in 2020, the NASA sonification project built off of other Chandra projects aimed at reaching blind and visually-impaired audiences. It has since shown to be meaningful to that community but also impacts much wider audiences, finding listeners through traditional and social media around the world.
Credit: Chandra X-ray: NASA/CXC/B.Gaensler et al; ROSAT X-ray: NASA/ROSAT/Asaoka & Aschenbach; Radio Wide: NRC/DRAO/D.Leahy; Optical: DSS; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
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This 2010 image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the Abell 644 galaxy in the center of a galaxy cluster that lies about 920 million light years from Earth. At the center of this galaxy is a growing supermassive black hole, called an active galactic nucleus (AGN) by astronomers, which is pulling in large quantities of gas.
Credit: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ/D.Haggard et al,
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This 2010 image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of the northern part of the galaxy cluster Abell 1758 show the effects of a collision between two smaller galaxy clusters. Chandra X-ray data reveal hot gas in the cluster. A study of this galaxy cluster and 31 others with Chandra and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India shows that huge radio halos are generated during collisions between galaxy clusters.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/M.Markevitch
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This 2011 image of NGC 4151 shows a close-up of the central region of the galaxy. The dimensions of the close-up are only 2,000 light years across. Here, the data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in blue, and we add in radio data from the VLA (purple) and HST data (yellow) showing oxygen emission. The linear structures show clear evidence for an earlier outburst from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/J.Wang et al.; Optical: Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma/Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA
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G327.1-1.1 is the aftermath of a massive star that exploded and left behind a highly magnetic, rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar. This pulsar is producing a wind of relativistic particles, seen in X-rays by Chandra and XMM-Newton. These 2010 X-ray observations allow scientists to estimate the energy released during the supernova explosion and the age of the remnant, as well as the amount of material being swept up as the blast wave from the explosion expands.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/T.Temim et al, ESA/XMM-Newton
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