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Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity.
Galaxy clusters tend to be poor at producing new stars in their centers. They generally have one giant galaxy in their middle that forms stars at a rate significantly slower than most galaxies – including our Milky Way. The central galaxy contains a supermassive black hole roughly a thousand times more massive than the one at the center of our galaxy. Without heating by outbursts from this black hole, the copious amounts of hot gas found in the central galaxy should cool, allowing stars to form at a high clip. It is thought that the central black hole acts as a thermostat, preventing rapid cooling of surrounding hot gas and impeding star formation.
New data provide more details on how the galaxy cluster SPT-CLJ2344-4243, nicknamed the Phoenix Cluster for the constellation in which it is found, challenges this trend. The cluster has shattered multiple records in the past: In 2012, scientists announced that the Phoenix cluster featured the highest rate of cooling hot gas and star formation ever seen in the center of a galaxy cluster, and is the most powerful producer of X-rays of all known clusters. The rate at which hot gas is cooling in the center of the cluster is also the largest ever observed.
New observations of this galaxy cluster at X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical wavelengths by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Clay-Magellan telescope located in Chile, are helping astronomers better understand this remarkable object. Clay-Magellan’s optical data reveal narrow filaments from the center of the cluster where stars are forming. These massive cosmic threads of gas and dust, most of which had never been detected before, extend for 160,000 to 330,000 lights years. This is longer than the entire breadth of the Milky Way galaxy, making them the most extensive filaments ever seen in a galaxy cluster.
These filaments surround large cavities – regions with greatly reduced X-ray emission – in the hot gas. The X-ray cavities can be seen in this composite image that shows the Chandra X-ray data in blue and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). For the location of these “inner cavities”, mouse over the image. Astronomers think that the X-ray cavities were carved out of the surrounding gas by powerful jets of high-energy particles emanating from near a supermassive black hole in the central galaxy of the cluster. As matter swirls toward a black hole, an enormous amount of gravitational energy is released. Combined radio and X-ray observations of supermassive black holes in other galaxy clusters have shown that a significant fraction of this energy is released as jets of outbursts that can last millions of years. The observed size of the X-ray cavities indicates that the outburst that produced the cavities in SPT-CLJ2344-4243 SPT- CLJ2344-4243 was one of the most energetic such events ever recorded.
However, the central black hole in the Phoenix cluster is suffering from somewhat of an identity crisis, sharing properties with both “quasars”, very bright objects powered by material falling onto a supermassive black hole, and “radio galaxies” containing jets of energetic particles that glow in radio waves, and are also powered by giant black holes. Half of the energy output from this black hole comes via jets mechanically pushing on the surrounding gas (radio-mode), and the other half from optical, UV and X-radiation originating in an accretion disk (quasar-mode). Astronomers suggest that the black hole may be in the process of flipping between these two states.
X-ray cavities located farther away from the center of the cluster, labeled as “outer cavities”, provide evidence for strong outbursts from the central black hole about a hundred million years ago (neglecting the light travel time to the cluster). This implies that the black hole may have been in a radio mode, with outbursts, about a hundred million years ago, then changed into a quasar mode, and then changed back into a radio mode.
It is thought that rapid cooling may have occurred in between these outbursts, triggering star formation in clumps and filaments throughout the central galaxy at a rate of about 610 solar masses per year. By comparison, only a couple of new stars form every year in our Milky Way galaxy. The extreme properties of the Phoenix cluster system are providing new insights into various astrophysical problems, including the formation of stars, the growth of galaxies and black holes, and the co-evolution of black holes and their environment.
A paper describing these results, led by Michael McDonald (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/M. McDonald et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI
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Three orbiting X-ray space telescopes have detected an increased rate of X-ray flares from the usually quiet giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy after new long-term monitoring. Scientists are trying to learn whether this is normal behavior that was unnoticed due to limited monitoring, or these flares are triggered by the recent close passage of a mysterious, dusty object.
By combining information from long monitoring campaigns by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton, with observations by the Swift satellite, astronomers were able to carefully trace the activity of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole over the last 15 years. The supermassive black hole, a.k.a. Sagittarius A*, weighs in at slightly more than 4 million times the mass of the Sun. X-rays are produced by hot gas flowing toward the black hole.
The new study reveals that Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short) has been producing one bright X-ray flare about every ten days. However, within the past year, there has been a ten-fold increase in the rate of bright flares from Sgr A*, at about one every day. This increase happened soon after the close approach to Sgr A* by a mysterious object called G2.
“For several years, we’ve been tracking the X-ray emission from Sgr A*. This includes also the close passage of this dusty object” said Gabriele Ponti of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. “A year or so ago, we thought it had absolutely no effect on Sgr A*, but our new data raise the possibility that that might not be the case."
Originally, astronomers thought G2 was an extended cloud of gas and dust. However, after passing close to Sgr A* in late 2013, its appearance did not change much, apart from being slightly stretched by the gravity of the black hole. This led to new theories that G2 was not simply a gas cloud, but instead a star swathed in an extended dusty cocoon.
“There isn’t universal agreement on what G2 is,” said Mark Morris of the University of California at Los Angeles. “However, the fact that Sgr A* became more active not long after G2 passed by suggests that the matter coming off of G2 might have caused an increase in the black hole’s feeding rate.”
While the timing of G2’s passage with the surge in X-rays from Sgr A* is intriguing astronomers see other black holes that seem to behave like Sgr A*. Therefore, it’s possible this increased chatter from Sgr A* may be a common trait among black holes and unrelated to G2. For example, the increased X-ray activity could be due to a change in the strength of winds from nearby massive stars that are feeding material to the black hole.
“It’s too soon to say for sure, but we will be keeping X-ray eyes on Sgr A* in the coming months,” said co-author Barbara De Marco, also of Max Planck. “Hopefully, new observations will tell us whether G2 is responsible for the changed behavior or if the new flaring is just part of how the black hole behaves.”
The analysis included 150 Chandra and XMM-Newton observations pointed at the center of the Milky Way over the last 15 years, extending from September 1999 to November 2014. An increase in the rate and brightness of bright flares from Sgr A* occurred after mid-2014, several months after the closest approach of G2 to the huge black hole.
If the G2 explanation is correct, the spike in bright X-ray flares would be the first sign of excess material falling onto the black hole because of the cloud’s close passage. Some gas would likely have been stripped off the cloud, and captured by the gravity of Sgr A*. It then could have started interacting with hot material flowing towards the black hole, funneling more gas toward the black hole that could later be consumed by Sgr A*.
A paper on these findings has been accepted by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. A preprint is available online. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/MPE/G. Ponti et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
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This 2010 image shows N49, the aftermath of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud. A long observation from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals evidence for a bullet-shaped object being blown out of a debris field left over from an exploded star.
Credit: NASA/CXC/Penn State/S.Park et al.
#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #NASAChandra #NASA #supernova
This composite of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope is a new look for NGC 6543, better known as the Cat's Eye nebula. This famous object is a so-called planetary nebula that represents a phase of stellar evolution that the Sun should experience several billion years from now.
Image Credit:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
G266.2-1.2 was produced by the explosion of a massive star in the Milky Way galaxy. A Chandra observation of this supernova remnant reveals the presence of extremely high-energy particles produced as the shock wave from this explosion expands into interstellar space. In this image, the X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey (red, green, and blue).
Read entire captions/view all images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/archives/more.html
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Morehead State Univ/T.Pannuti et al, Optical: DSS
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Editor's note: this is an alternate view of the Chandra image located on this prior post, www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/5431801240/, entitled "A Ring of Black Holes." Full caption and credit information can be found on this earlier page.
This composite image of Arp 147 shows Chandra X-ray data in pink, Hubble optical data in red, green and blue, ultraviolet GALEX data in green and infrared Spitzer data in red.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S.Rappaport et al, Optical: NASA/STScI
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2007/orion/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
These images of the planetary nebula Abell 30, (a.k.a. A30), show one of the clearest views ever obtained of a special phase of evolution for these objects. The inset image on the right is a close-up view of A30 showing X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in purple and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data showing optical emission from oxygen ions in orange. On the left is a larger view showing optical and X-ray data from the Kitt Peak National Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, respectively. In this image the optical data show emission from oxygen (orange) and hydrogen (green and blue), and X-ray emission is colored purple.
A planetary nebula -- so called because it looks like a planet when viewed with a small telescope -- is formed in the late stage of the evolution of a sun-like star. After having steadily produced energy for several billion years through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its central region, or core, the star undergoes a series of energy crises related to the depletion of hydrogen and subsequent contraction of the core. These crises culminate in the star expanding a hundred-fold to become a red giant.
Eventually the outer envelope of the red giant is ejected and moves away from the star at a relatively sedate speed of less than 100,000 miles per hour. The star meanwhile is transformed from a cool giant into a hot, compact star that produces intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation and a fast wind of particles moving at about 6 million miles per hour. The interaction of the UV radiation and the fast wind with the ejected red giant envelope creates the planetary nebula, shown by the large spherical shell in the bigger image.
In rare cases, nuclear fusion reactions in the region surrounding the star’s core heat the outer envelope of the star so much that it temporarily becomes a red giant again. The sequence of events -- envelope ejection followed by a fast stellar wind -- is repeated on a much faster scale than before, and a small-scale planetary nebula is created inside the original one. In a sense, the planetary nebula is reborn.
The large nebula seen in the larger image has an observed age of about 12,500 years and was formed by the initial interaction of the fast and slow winds. The cloverleaf pattern of knots seen in both images, correspond to the recently ejected material. These knots were produced much more recently, as they have an observed age of about 850 years, based on observations of their expansion using HST.
The diffuse X-ray emission seen in the larger image and in the region around the central source in the inset is caused by interactions between wind from the star and the knots of the ejected material. The knots are heated and eroded by this interaction, producing X-ray emission. The cause of the point-like X-ray emission from the central star is unknown.
Studies of A30 and other planetary nebulas help improve our understanding of the evolution of sun-like stars as they near the end of their lifetime. The X-ray emission reveals how the material lost by the stars at different evolutionary stages interact with each another. These observations of A30, located about 5500 light years away, provide a picture of the harsh environment that the solar system will evolve towards in several billion years, when the sun's strong stellar wind and energetic radiation will blast those planets that survived the previous, red giant phase of stellar evolution.
The structures seen in A30 originally inspired the idea of reborn planetary nebulas, and only three other examples of this phenomenon are known. A new study of A30, using the observatories mentioned above, has been reported by an international team of astronomers in the August 20th, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
The first author of the paper reporting these results is Martín A. Guerrero of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) in Spain. The other authors are N. Ruiz, also from the IAA-CSIC, Spain; W.-R. Hamann, from the University of Potsdam, Germany; Y.-H. Chu, from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL; H. Todt, from the University of Potsdam, Germany; D. Schönberner, from the Leibniz-Institut Für Astrophysik in Potsdam, Germany; L. Oskinova, from the University of Potsdam, Germany; R. Gruendl, from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL; M. Steffen, from the Leibniz-Institut Für Astrophysik in Potsdam, Germany; W. Blair, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD and J. Toalá from the IAA-CSIC, Spain.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/a30/
Image credit: Inset X-ray (NASA/CXC/IAA-CSIC/M.Guerrero et al); Inset Optical (NASA/STScI); Widefield X-ray (ESA/XMM-Newton); Widefield Optical (NSF/NOAO/KPNO)
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Hello Flickr friends! Feb. 20 is a quirky holiday called "Love Your Pet Day." To celebrate, we looked up the top seven pets and searched for space images for each animal. I'm getting an early start tonight by posting this Chandra "Hydra" image in honor of #7 on the list: the crafty and often misunderstood Snake. (That would be the Lernaean Hydra, not the simple, freshwater Hydra.)
As a bonus, check out this twisting, serpentine image of the Rio Negro floodplain in Patagonia, Argentina: www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/4358585360/in/photolis...
Any guesses for what animal will be #6 on the list of most popular pets? I'll post the answer tomorrow morning.
Caption: This composite image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster shows 10-million-degree gas observed by Chandra in blue and jets of radio emission observed by the Very Large Array in pink. Optical data (in yellow) from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey shows galaxies in the cluster.
Detailed analysis of the Chandra data shows that the gas located along the direction of the radio jets is enhanced in iron and other metals. Scientists think these elements have been produced by Type Ia supernova explosions in the large galaxy at the center of the cluster. A powerful outburst from the supermassive black hole then pushed the material outwards, over distances extending for almost 400,000 light years, extending beyond the region shown in this image. About 10 to 20 percent of the iron in the galaxy has been displaced, requiring a few percent of the total energy produced by the central black hole.
Outbursts from the central, supermassive black hole have not only pushed elements outwards, but have created a series of cavities in the hot gas. As these jets blasted through the galaxy into the surrounding multimillion-degree intergalactic gas, they pushed the hot gas aside to create the cavities. A relatively recent outburst created a pair of cavities visible as dark regions in the Chandra image located around the radio emission. These cavities are so large they would be able to contain the entire Milky Way galaxy, but they are dwarfed by even larger cavities -- too faint to be visible in this image - created by earlier, more powerful outbursts from the black hole. The largest of these cavities is immense, extending for about 670,000 light years.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Waterloo/C.Kirkpatrick et al.; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Optical: Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope/DSS
Original image: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/hydra/
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
These images represent 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 10 billion years. In these images, X-rays from Chandra are shown along with optical data from Hubble.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/M. Calzadilla el al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk & J. Major
#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #NASAChandra #NASA #galaxy #NASAWebb #Hubble #NASAHubble
Editor's Note: This is a close-up detail from a larger image at: www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/4970835359/
This composite image shows the Rosette star formation region, located about 5,000 light years from Earth. Data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are colored red and outlined by a white line. The X-rays reveal hundreds of young stars in the central cluster and fainter clusters on either side. Optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey and the Kitt Peak National Observatory (purple, orange, green and blue) show large areas of gas and dust, including giant pillars that remain behind after intense radiation from massive stars has eroded the more diffuse gas.
A recent Chandra study of the cluster on the right side of the image, named NGC 2237, provides the first probe of the low-mass stars in this satellite cluster. Previously only 36 young stars had been discovered in NGC 2237, but the Chandra work has increased this sample to about 160 stars. The presence of several X-ray emitting stars around the pillars and the detection of an outflow -- commonly associated with very young stars -- originating from a dark area of the optical image indicates that star formation is continuing in NGC 2237. By combining these results with earlier studies, the scientists conclude that the central cluster formed first, followed by expansion of the nebula, which triggered the formation of the two neighboring clusters, including NGC 2237.
This work was led by Junfeng Wang of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The co-authors were Eric Feigelson, Leisa Townsley, Pat Broos and Gordon Garmire from Penn State University, Carlos Roman-Zuniga from the German-Spanish Astronomical Center in Spain, and Elizabeth Lada from the University of Florida.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/rosette/
Image credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Wang et al), Optical (DSS & NOAO/AURA/NSF/KPNO 0.9-m/T. Rector et al)
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
This composite image of Chandra and Hubble Space Telescope data offers astronomers an opportunity to compare where the hotter, X-ray emitting gas appears in relation to the cooler material seen in optical wavelengths. The Chandra team found that the chemical abundances in the region of hot gas (its X-ray intensity is shown in purple) were like those in the wind from the central star and different from the outer cooler material (the red and green structures.) Although still incredibly energetic and hot enough to radiate X-rays, Chandra shows the hot gas to be somewhat cooler than scientists would have expected for such a system. These results present a puzzle since the temperature of the X-ray emitting material suggests that mixing might have occurred. This discrepancy means some other process has created the "lukewarm" X-ray emission observed by Chandra. The color composite of optical and X-ray images was made by Zoltan G. Levay (Space Telescope Science Institute). The optical images were taken by J.P. Harrington and K.J. Borkowski (University of Maryland) with the Hubble Space Telescope.
Image credit: X-ray/Optical Composite (X-ray: NASA/UIUC/Y.Chu et al., Optical: NASA/HST)
Original release: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2001/1220/
Learn more about Chandra: www.nasa.gov/chandra
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
Editor's note: all of these winter-themed images I've been posting are so beautiful, but they've made me feel cold! This bright image of some multi-million-degree star formation should take the chill from our bones...
A new Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Messier 82, or M82, shows the result of star formation on overdrive. M82 is located about 12 million light years from Earth and is the nearest place to us where the conditions are similar to those when the Universe was much younger with lots of stars forming.
M82 is a so-called starburst galaxy, where stars are forming at rates that are tens or even hundreds of times higher than in a normal galaxy. The burst of star birth may be caused by a close encounter or collision with another galaxy, which sends shock waves rushing through the galaxy. In the case of M82, astronomers think that a brush with its neighbor galaxy M81 millions of years ago set off this torrent of star formation.
M82 is seen nearly edge-on with its disk crossing from about 10 o'clock to about 4 o'clock in this image from Chandra (where low, medium, and high-energy X-rays are colored red, green, and blue respectively.) Among the 104 point-like X-ray sources in the image, eight so far have been observed to be very bright in X-rays and undergo clear changes in brightness over periods of weeks and years. This means they are excellent candidates to be black holes pulling material from companion stars that are much more massive than the Sun. Only a handful of such binary systems are known in the Local Group of galaxies containing the Milky Way and M31.
Chandra observations are also important in understanding the rapid rate at which supernovas explode in starburst galaxies like M82. When the shock waves travel through the galaxy, they push on giant clouds of gas and dust, which causes them to collapse and form massive stars. These stars, in turn, use up their fuel quickly and explode as supernovas. These supernovas produce expanding bubbles of multimillion-degree gas that extend for millions light years away from the galaxy's disk. These bubbles are seen as the large red areas to the upper right and lower left of the image.
Credits: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan/R.Kilgard et al.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/m82/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
The details of how massive stars explode remains one of the biggest questions in astrophysics. Located in the neighboring galaxy of the Small Magellanic Cloud, this supernova, SNR B0049-73.6, provides astronomers with another excellent example of such an explosion to study. Chandra observations of the dynamics and composition of the debris from the explosion support the view that the explosion was produced by the collapse of the central core of a star. In this image, X-rays from Chandra (purple) are combined with infrared data from the 2MASS survey (red, green, and blue).
Read entire captions/view all images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/archives/more.html
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Drew Univ/S.Hendrick et al, Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSFech
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Description: A new study of the Perseus galaxy cluster, shown in this image, and others using Chandra and XMM-Newton has revealed a mysterious X-ray signal in the data. The signal is also seen in over 70 other galaxy clusters using XMM-Newton. This unidentified X-ray emission line - a spike of intensity centered on about 3.56 kiloelectron volts - requires further investigation to confirm both the signal's existence and nature. One possibility is this signal is from the decay of sterile neutrinos, one proposed candidate to explain dark matter.
Creator: Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Record URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/perseus/
A new collection of stunning images highlights data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. These objects have been observed in light invisible to human eyes — including X-rays, infrared, and radio — by some of the world's most powerful telescopes. The data from different types of light has been assigned colors that the human eye can perceive, allowing us to explore these cosmic entities.
The objects in this quintet of images range both in distance and category. Vela and Kepler are the remains of exploded stars within our own Milky Way galaxy, the center of which can be seen in the top panorama. In NGC 1365, we see a double-barred spiral galaxy located about 60 million light-years from Earth. Farther away and on an even larger scale, ESO 137-001 shows what happens when a galaxy hurtles through space and leaves a wake behind it.
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #astronomy #chandra #NASAChandra #NASA
Happy "Supernova Sunday" for those watching the Superbowl!
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p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the Galaxy.
The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1+0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way.
Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion.
Data from Chandra and other telescopes suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is between 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means that the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion This is comparable to the exceptionally high speed derived for the neutron star in Puppis A, another neutron star moving at a blistering pace within a supernova remnant. The G350+1+0.3 data provide new evidence that extremely powerful "kicks" may be imparted to neutron stars left behind once the supernova has exploded.
Another intriguing aspect of G350.1+0.3 is its unusual shape. While many supernova remnants are nearly circular, G350.1+0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas.
The age of 600-1200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1+0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant.
These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The scientists on this paper were Igor Lovchinsky and Patrick Slane (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Bryan Gaensler (University of Sydney, Australia), Jack Hughes (Rutgers University), Jasmina Lazendic (Monash University Clayton, Australia), Joseph Gelfand (New York University, Abu Dhabi), and Crystal Brogan (National Radio Astronomy Observatory).
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Read entire caption/view more images: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/g350.html
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Description: This debris field, which glows brightly in X-rays, was left over when a star exploded about 4,500 years ago. This object, known as G299.2-2.9, belongs to a particular class of supernovas called Type Ia. Astronomers think that a Type Ia supernova involves a thermonuclear explosion - involving the fusion of elements and release of vast amounts of energy - of a white dwarf star in a tight orbit with a companion star. In the Chandra image, red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high-energy X-rays, respectively, detected by the telescope.
Creator: Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Record URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2015/g299/
Editor's note: this image is part of the composite/artist concept image of Cygnus X-1 that was published on 11/17/2011. This is a beautiful example of the type of pure X-ray images that Chandra produces when observing the universe.
Over three decades ago, Stephen Hawking placed -- and eventually lost - a bet against the existence of a black hole in Cygnus X-1. Today, astronomers are confident the Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole. In fact, a team of scientists has combined data from radio, optical, and X-ray telescopes including Chandra to determine the black hole's spin, mass, and distance more precisely than ever before. With these key pieces of information, the history of the black hole has been reconstructed. This new information gives astronomers strong clues about how the black hole was born, how much it weighed, and how fast it was spinning. This is important because scientists still would like to know much more about the birth of black holes.
Credit: NASA/CXC
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/cygx1/more.html
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
On Dec. 9, astronomers and physicists will commemorate two years of landmark X-ray science by NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission.
IXPE is the joint NASA-Italian Space Agency mission to study polarized X-ray light. Polarization is a characteristic of light that can help reveal information about where that light came from, such as the geometry and inner workings of the ultra-powerful energy sources from which it emanates.
This new image of supernova remnant SN 1006 combines data from IXPE and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The red, green, and blue elements reflect low, medium, and high energy X-rays, respectively, as detected by Chandra. The IXPE data, which measure the polarization of the X-ray light, is show in purple in the upper left corner, with the addition of lines representing the outward movement of the remnant’s magnetic field.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO (Chandra); NASA/MSFC/Nanjing Univ./P. Zhou et al. (IXPE); IR: NASA/JPL/CalTech/Spitzer; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Schmidt
#NASAMarshall #NASA #astrophysics #astronomy #chandra #NASAChandra #NASA #blackhole #pulsar #IXPE
Read more about NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)
This image shows an X-ray, radio and infrared composite of RCW 38, a star cluster located approximately 6,000 light years from Earth.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk et al.; Infrared: ISAAC/VLT; Radio: ATCA
Read more about another RCW 39-related image: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/rcw38/
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Editor's note: earlier this month, we featured the "Whirlpool Galaxy Sparkles in X-rays" image. This striking view shows the three-color X-ray image that was part of the composite -- a beautiful image in its own right.
Nearly a million seconds of observing time with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way glittering with hundreds of X-ray points of light.
The galaxy is officially named Messier 51 (M51) or NGC 5194, but often goes by its nickname of the "Whirlpool Galaxy." Like the Milky Way, the Whirlpool is a spiral galaxy with spectacular arms of stars and dust. M51 is located about 30 million light years from Earth, and its face-on orientation to Earth gives us a perspective that we can never get of our own spiral galactic home.
By using Chandra, astronomers can peer into the Whirlpool to uncover things that can only be detected in X-rays. In this new composite image, Chandra data are shown in purple. Optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope are red, green, and blue.
Most of the X-ray sources are X-ray binaries (XRBs). These systems consist of pairs of objects where a compact star, either a neutron star or, more rarely, a black hole, is capturing material from an orbiting companion star. The infalling material is accelerated by the intense gravitational field of the compact star and heated to millions of degrees, producing a luminous X-ray source. The Chandra observations reveal that at least ten of the XRBs in M51 are bright enough to contain black holes. In eight of these systems the black holes are likely capturing material from companion stars that are much more massive than the Sun.
Because astronomers have been observing M51 for about a decade with Chandra, they have critical information about how X-ray sources containing black holes behave over time. The black holes with massive stellar companions are consistently bright over the ten years of Chandra observations. These results suggest that the high-mass stars in these X-ray sources also have strong winds that allow for a steady stream of material to flow onto the black hole.
Read full caption:
chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/m51/
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R.Kilgard, et al.
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
The Thunderbird Motel sign in Reno Nevada soars across the center of the Milky Way Galaxy 26,000 light years away.
This composite image shows the most distant X-ray jet ever observed. X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in blue, radio data from the NSF's Very Large Array are shown in purple and optical data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are shown in yellow. The jet was produced by a quasar named GB 1428+4217, or GB 1428 for short, and is located 12.4 billion light years from Earth. Labels for the quasar and jet can be seen by mousing over the image. The shape of the jet is very similar in the X-ray and radio data.
Giant black holes at the centers of galaxies can pull in matter at a rapid rate producing the quasar phenomenon. The energy released as particles fall toward the black hole generates intense radiation and powerful beams of high-energy particles that blast away from the black hole at nearly the speed of light. These particle beams can interact with magnetic fields or ambient photons to produce jets of radiation.
As the electrons in the jet fly away from the quasar, they move through a sea of background photons left behind after the Big Bang. When a fast-moving electron collides with one of these so-called cosmic microwave background photons, it can boost the photon’s energy into the X-ray band. Because the quasar is seen when the universe is at an age of about 1.3 billion years, less than 10% of its current value, the cosmic background radiation is a thousand times more intense than it is now. This makes the jet much brighter, and compensates in part for the dimming due to distance.
While there is another possible source of X-rays for the jet - radiation from electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines in the jet - the authors favor the idea that the cosmic background radiation is being boosted because the jet is so bright.
The researchers think the length of the jet in GB 1428 is at least 230,000 light years, or about twice the diameter of the entire Milky Way galaxy. This jet is only seen on one side of the quasar in the Chandra and VLA data. When combined with previously obtained evidence, this suggests the jet is pointed almost directly toward us. This configuration would boost the X-ray and radio signals for the observed jet and diminish those for a jet presumably pointed in the opposite direction.
This result appeared in the Sept. 1, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/gb1428/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NRC/C.Cheung et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Editor's Note: Happy Monday, Flickr friends! In honor of Valentine's week, I'll dig out some of our best hearts and rings and pinks and reds for reposting. Also, Marshall Space Flight Center is having our "I Heart NASA" social media campaign. Do you heart NASA? Share your photos on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and use the hashtag #iheartnasa. Share the love. :)
This Chandra image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region. Evidence from radio, optical and ultraviolet telescopes suggests that the hot cloud, which is about 100 light years across, is the remnant of a supernova explosion that occurred thousands of years ago.
The progenitor could have been a companion of the massive young star that is responsible for the bright X-ray source at the top center of the image. This young star, HD 5980, one of the most massive known, has been observed to undergo dramatic eruptions during the last decade. An alternative model for the origin of the hot cloud is that eruptions of HD 5980 long ago produced the cloud of hot gas, in a manner similar to the gas cloud observed around the massive star Eta Carinae.
Future observations will be needed to decide between the alternatives. Until then, the nature of the heart in the darkness will remain mysterious.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/U.Liege/Y.Nazé et al.
Original image: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/ngc346/
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Editor's Note: This is an archive image from 2006.
NGC 3576 is a giant HII region of glowing gas located about 9,000 light years from Earth. In the Chandra image of this star forming region, lower-energy X-rays (0.5-2.0 keV) are shown in red and higher-energy X-rays (2-8 keV) are in blue. Chandra reveals a cluster of point-like X-ray sources, some of which are massive young stars that are shredding the cloud of gas from which they formed. The blue sources are stars that are deeply embedded in gas. Regions of diffuse X-ray emission are likely caused by hot winds flowing away from the most massive stars. Some of the diffuse gas near the center of the image is also deeply embedded.
HII (pronounced "H-two") regions are where stars are born from condensing clouds of hydrogen gas (they are named for the large amounts of ionized atomic hydrogen they contain.) These regions are characterized by hot, young, massive stars which emit large amounts of ultraviolet light and ionize the nebula. Because NGC 3576 is very dense, many of the young, massive stars visible in the Chandra image have previously been hidden from view. A cluster of stars is visible in infrared observations, but not enough young, massive stars have been identified to explain the brightness of the nebula. Astronomers have found a large flow of ionized gas in radio observations and huge bubbles in optical images that extend out from the edge of the HII region. Taken with the X-ray data, this information hints that powerful winds are emerging from this hidden cluster.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/ngc3576/
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Penn State/L.Townsley et al.
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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In commemoration of the 15th anniversary of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, four newly processed images of supernova remnants dramatically illustrate Chandra’s unique ability to explore high-energy processes in the cosmos.
This image shows 3C58, the remnant of a supernova observed in the year 1181 AD by Chinese and Japanese astronomers. This new Chandra image shows the center of 3C58, which contains a rapidly spinning neutron star surrounded by a thick ring, or torus, of X-ray emission. The pulsar also has produced jets of X-rays blasting away from it to both the left and right, and extending trillions of miles. These jets are responsible for creating the elaborate web of loops and swirls revealed in the X-ray data. These features, similar to those found in the Crab Nebula, are evidence that 3C58 and others like it are capable of generating both swarms of high-energy particles and powerful magnetic fields. In this image, low, medium, and high-energy X-rays detected by Chandra are red, green, and blue respectively.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Read full article:
www.nasa.gov/chandra/news/chandra-15th-anniversary.html
Original caption/more images: www.nasa.gov/chandra/multimedia/chandra-15th-anniversary-...
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
The combined observations from multiple telescopes of Henize 2-10, a dwarf starburst galaxy located about 30 million light years from Earth, has provided astronomers with a detailed new look at how galaxy and black hole formation may have occured in the early Universe. This image shows optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope in red, green and blue, X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in purple, and radio data from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array in yellow. A compact X-ray source at the center of the galaxy coincides with a radio source, giving evidence for an actively growing supermassive black hole with a mass of about one million times that of the sun.
Stars are forming in Henize 2-10 at a prodigious rate, giving the star clusters in this galaxy their blue appearance. This combination of a burst of star formation and a massive black hole is analogous to conditions in the early Universe. Since Henize 2-10 does not contain a significant bulge of stars in its center, these results show that supermassive black hole growth may precede the growth of bulges in galaxies. This differs from the relatively nearby Universe where the growth of galaxy bulges and supermassive black holes appears to occur in parallel.
Image credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Virginia/A.Reines et al); Radio (NRAO/AUI/NSF); Optical (NASA/STScI)
View original image/caption:
chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/he210/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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A group of unusual giant black holes may be consuming excessive amounts of matter, according to a new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This finding may help astronomers understand how the largest black holes were able to grow so rapidly in the early Universe.
Astronomers have known for some time that supermassive black holes − with masses ranging from millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun and residing at the centers of galaxies − can gobble up huge quantities of gas and dust that have fallen into their gravitational pull. As the matter falls towards these black holes, it glows with such brilliance that they can be seen billions of light years away. Astronomers call these extremely ravenous black holes “quasars.”
Read Full Article: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/nasas-chandra-suggests-black-h...
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
This two-panel graphic contains two composite images of galaxies used in a recent study of supermassive black holes. In each of the galaxies, data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are blue, and optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky survey are colored red, green and blue. The galaxy on the left, Abell 644, is in the center of a galaxy cluster that lies about 1.1 billion light years from Earth. On the right is an isolated, or "field," galaxy named SDSS J1021+131, which is located about 900 million light years away. At the center of both of these galaxies is a growing supermassive black hole, called an active galactic nucleus (AGN) by astronomers, which is pulling in large quantities of gas.
A newly published study from Chandra tells scientists how often the biggest black holes in field galaxies like SDSS J1021+131 have been active over the last few billion years. This has important implications for how environment affects black hole growth. The scientists found that only about one percent of field galaxies with masses similar to the Milky Way contain supermassive black holes in their most active phase. They also found that the most massive galaxies are the most likely to host these AGN, and that there is a gradual decline in the AGN fraction with cosmic time. Finally, the AGN fraction for field galaxies was found to be indistinguishable from that for galaxies in dense clusters, like Abell 644.
This study involves a survey called the Chandra Multiwavelength Project, or ChaMP, which covers 30 square degrees on the sky, the largest area covered of any Chandra survey to date. Combining Chandra's X-ray images with optical images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, about 100,000 galaxies were analyzed. Out of those, about 1,600 were bright in X-ray light, signaling possible AGN activity.
Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ/D.Haggard et al. Optical: SDSS
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/2gal/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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A small, dense object only 12 miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image, made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/P. Slane et al.
More about this image:
chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/b1509/
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Chandra is celebrating 10 years of operation. This image from 2006 shows a monster black hole wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting galaxy cluster.
This is a composite image of galaxy cluster MS0735.6+7421, located about 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation Camelopardus. The image represents three views of the region that astronomers have combined into one photograph. The optical view of the galaxy cluster, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys in February 2006, shows dozens of galaxies bound together by gravity. Diffuse, hot gas with a temperature of nearly 50 million degrees permeates the space between the galaxies. The gas emits X-rays, seen as blue in the image taken with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in November 2003. The X-ray portion of the image shows enormous holes or cavities in the gas, each roughly 640,000 light-years in diameter -- nearly seven times the diameter of the Milky Way. The cavities are filled with charged particles gyrating around magnetic field lines and emitting radio waves shown in the red portion of image taken with the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico in June 1993. The cavities were created by jets of charged particles ejected at nearly light speed from a supermassive black hole weighing nearly a billion times the mass of our Sun lurking in the nucleus of the bright central galaxy. The jets displaced more than one trillion solar masses worth of gas. The power required to displace the gas exceeded the power output of the Sun by nearly ten trillion times in the past 100 million years.
Image credit: Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. Waterloo/B.McNamara; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/Univ. Waterloo/B.McNamara; Radio: NRAO/Ohio Univ./L.Birzan et al.
Read more about this image: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/ms0735/
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Happy "Supernova Sunday" for those watching the Superbowl!
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151, dubbed the "Eye of Sauron" by astronomers for its similarity to the eye of the malevolent character in "The Lord of the Rings". In the "pupil" of the eye, X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen ("H II") from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red around the pupil shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array. This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred.
A recent study has shown that the X-ray emission was likely caused by an outburst powered by the supermassive black hole located in the white region in the center of the galaxy. Evidence for this idea comes from the elongation of the X-rays running from the top left to the bottom right and details of the X-ray spectrum. There are also signs of interactions between a central source and the surrounding gas, particularly the yellow arc of H II emission located above and to the left of the black hole.
Two different scenarios to explain the X-ray emission have been proposed. One possibility is that the central black hole was growing much more quickly about 25,000 years ago (in Earth's time frame) and the radiation from the material falling onto the black hole was so bright that it stripped electrons away from the atoms in the gas in its path. X-rays were then emitted when electrons recombined with these ionized atoms.
The second possibility also involved a substantial inflow of material into the black hole relatively recently. In this scenario the energy released by material flowing into the black hole in an accretion disk created a vigorous outflow of gas from the surface of the disk. This outflowing gas directly heated gas in its path to X-ray emitting temperatures. Unless the gas is confined somehow, it would expand away from the region in less than 100,000 years. In both of these scenarios, the relatively short amount of time since the last episode of high activity by the black hole may imply such outbursts occupy at least about 1% of the black hole's lifetime.
NGC 4151 is located about 43 million light years away from the Earth and is one of the nearest galaxies which contains an actively growing black hole. Because of this proximity, it offers one of the best chances of studying the interaction between an active supermassive black hole and the surrounding gas of its host galaxy. Such interaction, or "feedback", is recognized to play a key role in the growth of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. If the X-ray emission in NGC 4151 originates from hot gas heated by the outflow from the central black hole, it would be strong evidence for feedback from active black holes to the surrounding gas on galaxy scales. This would resemble the larger scale feedback, observed on galaxy cluster scales, from active black holes interacting with the surrounding gas, as seen in objects like the Perseus Cluster.
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
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/n4151/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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In the middle of the twentieth century, an unusual star was spotted in the constellation of Canes Venatici (Latin for “hunting dogs”). Years later, astronomers determined that this object, dubbed AM Canum Venaticorum (or, AM CVn, for short), was, in fact, two stars. These stars revolve around each other every 18 minutes, and are predicted to generate gravitational waves -- ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein.
The name AM CVn came to represent a new class of objects where one white dwarf star is pulling matter from another very compact companion star, such as a second white dwarf. (White dwarf stars are dense remains of sun-like stars that have run out of fuel and collapsed to the size of the Earth.) The pairs of stars in AM CVn systems orbit each other extremely rapidly, whipping around one another in an hour, and in one case as quickly as five minutes. By contrast, the fastest orbiting planet in our solar system, Mercury, orbits the sun once every 88 days.
Despite being known for almost 50 years, the question has remained: where do AM CVn systems come from? New X-ray and optical observations have begun to answer that with the discovery of the first known systems of double stars that astronomers think will evolve into AM CVn systems.
The two binary systems -- known by their shortened names of J0751 and J1741 -- were observed in X-rays by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope. Observations at optical wavelengths were made using the McDonald Observatory’s 2.1-meter telescope in Texas, and the Mt. John Observatory 1.0-meter telescopes in New Zealand.
The artist’s illustration depicts what these systems are like now and what may happen to them in the future. The top panel shows the current state of the binary that contains one white dwarf (on the right) with about one-fifth the mass of the sun and another much heavier and more compact white dwarf about five or more times as massive (unlike sun-like stars, heavier white dwarfs are smaller).
As the two white dwarfs orbit around each other, gravitational waves – that is, ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein – will be given off causing the orbit to become tighter. Eventually the smaller, heavier white dwarf will start pulling matter from the larger, lighter one, as shown in the middle panel, forming an AM CVn system. This process continues until so much matter accumulates on the more massive white dwarf that a thermonuclear explosion may occur in about 100 million years.
One possibility is that the thermonuclear explosion could destroy the larger white dwarf completely in what astronomers call a Type Ia supernova (the type of supernova used to mark large distances across the Universe by serving as so-called standard candles.) However, it’s more likely that a thermonuclear explosion will occur only on the surface of the star, leaving it scarred but intact. The resulting outburst is likely to be about one tenth the brightness of a Type Ia supernova. Such outbursts have been named -- somewhat tongue-in-cheek -- as .Ia supernovae. Such .Ia outbursts have been observed in other galaxies, but J0751 and J1741 are the first binary stars known which can produce .Ia outbursts in the future.
The optical observations were critical in identifying the two white dwarfs in these systems and ascertaining their masses. The X-ray observations were needed to rule out the possibility that J0751 and J1741 contained neutron stars. A neutron star -- which would disqualify it from being a possible parent to an AM CVn system -- would give off strong X-ray emission due to its magnetic field and rapid rotation. Neither Chandra nor XMM-Newton detected any X-rays from these systems.
AM CVn systems are of interest to scientists because they are predicted to be sources of gravitational waves, as noted above. This is important because even though such waves have yet to be detected, many scientists and engineers are working on instruments that should be able to detect them in the near future. This will open a significant new observational window to the universe.
The paper reporting these results is available online [arxiv.org/abs/1310.6359] and is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. The authors are Mukremin Kilic from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK; J.J. Hermes from the University of Texas at Austin in TX; Alexandros Gianninas from the University of Oklahoma; Warren Brown from Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA; Craig Heinke from University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada; Marcel Ag¨ueros from Columbia University in New York, NY; Paul Chote and Denis Sullivan from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; and Keaton Bell and Samuel Harrold from University of Texas at Austin.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Read entire caption: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/white-dwarf...
Image credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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Editor's Note: This is an archive image from 2003. So pretty that I had to dust it off and give it a little exposure. Doesn't it look like a teardrop?
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the supernova remnant DEM L71 reveals a hot inner cloud (aqua) of glowing iron and silicon surrounded by an outer blast wave. Data from the Chandra observation show that the central ten-million-degree Celsius cloud is the remains of a supernova explosion that destroyed a white dwarf star.
DEM L71 presents a textbook example of the double-shock structure expected to develop when a star explodes and ejects matter at high speeds into the surrounding interstellar gas. The expanding ejecta drive an outward-moving shock wave that races ahead of the ejecta into the interstellar gas (bright outer rim). The pressure behind this shock wave drives an inward-moving shock wave that heats the ejecta, seen as the aqua cloud.
The clear separation of the shocked matter and the heated ejecta in the Chandra image allowed astronomers to determine the mass and composition of the ejecta. The computed ejected mass was found to be comparable to the mass of the Sun. This and the X-ray spectrum, which exhibits a high concentration of iron atoms relative to oxygen and silicon, convincingly show that the ejecta are the remains of an exploded white dwarf star. The size and temperature of the remnant indicate that it is several thousand years old.
Astronomers have identified two major types of supernovas: Type II, in which a massive star explodes; and Type Ia, in which a white dwarf star explodes because it has pulled too much material from a nearby companion star onto itself. If the mass of the white dwarf becomes greater than about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, it becomes unstable and is blown apart in a thermonuclear explosion. This was the case in DEM L71.
One of the major goals of the study of supernova remnants is to determine the type of supernova explosion. The identification of DEM L71 as the remnant of an exploded white dwarf, or Type Ia supernova, represents a major step forward in understanding more about the ways in which stars explode.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Hughes et al; Optical: Rutgers Fabry-Perot
View original image/caption:
chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/deml71/
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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Description: The Eta Carinae double star system contains one of the biggest and brightest stars in our Galaxy, weighing at least 90 times the mass of the Sun. It is also extremely volatile and is expected to have at least one supernova explosion in the future.
Astronomers are using Chandra to learn more about Eta Carinae through the X-rays it generates. This new Chandra image shows Eta Carinae with low energy X-rays in red, medium energy X-rays in green, and high energy X-rays in blue. The Chandra data are helping to reveal, among other things, how the powerful winds from the two stars in this system interact.
Creator: Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Record URL:http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/etacar/
Editor's Note: This is an archive image from 2003. This is a close-up detail from the main image, posted at: www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/4362557297/
Chandra's X-ray image (blue) has been combined with Hubble's optical image (red and green) to compose this stunning and revealing picture of the spiral galaxy NGC 3079. Towering filaments consisting of warm (about ten thousand degrees Celsius) and hot (about ten million degrees Celsius) gas blend to create the bright horseshoe-shaped feature near the center.
The correlation of the warm and hot filaments suggests that they were both formed as a superwind of gas -- rushing out from the central regions of the galaxy -- carved a cavity in the cool gas of disk galactic disk. The superwind stripped fragments of gas off the walls of the cavity, stretched them into long filaments, and heated them. The full extent of the superwind shows up as a fainter conical cloud of X-ray emission surrounding the filaments.
A superwind, such as the one in NGC 3079 originates in the center of the galaxy, either from activity generated by a central supermassive black hole, or by a burst of supernova activity. Superwinds are thought to play a key role in the evolution of galaxies by regulating the formation of new stars, and by dispersing heavy elements to the outer parts of the galaxy and beyond. These latest Chandra data indicate that astronomers may be seriously underestimating the mass lost in superwinds and therefore their influence within and around the host galaxy.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/ngc3079/
Image credit: NASA/CXC/STScI/U.North Carolina/G.Cecil
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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Description: The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be producing tiny particles, called neutrinos, that have virtually no mass and carry no electric charge. This Chandra image shows the region around the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, in low, medium, and high-energy X-rays (red, green, and blue respectively.) Scientists have found a connection to outbursts generated by the black hole and seen by Chandra and other X-ray telescopes with the detection of high-energy neutrinos in an observatory under the South Pole.
Creator: Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Record URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/sgra/
Editor's Note: This is an archive image from 2001.
This Chandra X-ray image shows the relationship between the black hole Sagittarius A* and the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East, both of which are located in the center of our galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius. For the first time, astronomers using Chandra were able to separate the supernova remnant, Sgr A East, from other complex structures in the center of the Milky Way. The emission from the supernova remnant Sgr A East is depicted by the bright yellow and orange tones in the middle of this image. From the Chandra image, scientists can clearly see that Sgr A East surrounds Sgr A*, the Milky Way's central black hole found near the white dots in the lower-right portion of the central object.
With Chandra, astronomers found hot gas concentrated within the larger radio shell of Sgr A East. The gas is highly enriched by heavy elements, with four times more calcium and iron than the Sun, and that confirms earlier suspicions that Sgr A East is most likely a remnant of a supernova explosion. While dozens of supernova remnants are known in our galaxy, the proximity of Sgr A East to the black hole in the center of our galaxy makes it important. By detailing the association between Sgr A East and Sgr A*, astronomers hope to learn if this is an example of a common relationship between supernovas and black holes throughout the universe.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2001/sgr_a/
Image credit: NASA/Penn State/G.Garmire et al.
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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This Hubble image shows bright, blue, newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors.
At the heart of the star-forming region lies star cluster NGC 602. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot young stars is sculpting the inner edge of the outer portions of the nebula, slowly eroding it away and eating into the material beyond. The diffuse outer reaches of the nebula prevent the energetic outflows from streaming away from the cluster.
Ridges of dust and gaseous filaments are seen in the upper-left part of the image and toward the lower-right corner. Dust pillars point toward the hot, blue stars and are tell-tale signs of their eroding effect. In this region it is possible with Hubble to trace how the star formation started at the center of the cluster and propagated outward, with the youngest stars still forming today along the dust ridges.
The Small Magellanic Cloud, in the constellation Tucana, is roughly 200,000 light-years from the Earth. Its proximity to us makes it an exceptional laboratory to perform in-depth studies of star formation processes and their evolution in an environment slightly different from our own Milky Way.
Dwarf galaxies such as the Small Magellanic Cloud, with significantly fewer stars compared to our own galaxy, are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. The study of star formation within this dwarf galaxy is particularly interesting to astronomers because its primitive nature means that it lacks a large percentage of the heavier elements that are forged in successive generations of stars through nuclear fusion.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2007/news-2007-04.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) – ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Neutron stars, the ultra-dense cores left behind after massive stars collapse, contain the densest matter known in the Universe outside of a black hole. New results from Chandra and other X-ray telescopes have provided one of the most reliable determinations yet of the relation between the radius of a neutron star and its mass. These results constrain how nuclear matter – protons and neutrons, and their constituent quarks – interact under the extreme conditions found in neutron stars.
Three telescopes -- Chandra, ESA's XMM-Newton, and NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) -- were used to observe 8 different neutron stars, including one in 47 Tucanae, a globular cluster located about 15,000 light years away in the outskirts of the Milky Way. The image shown here was constructed from a long Chandra observation of 47 Tucanae. Lower-energy X-rays are red, X-rays with intermediate energies are green, and the highest-energy X-rays are shown in blue.
In the image, the double, or binary, star system labeled as X7 contains a neutron star slowly pulling gas away from a companion star with a mass much lower than the Sun. In 2006, researchers used observations of the amount of X-rays from X7 at different energies together with theoretical models to determine a relationship between the mass and the radius of the neutron star. A similar procedure was used for Chandra observations of a neutron star in another globular cluster, NGC 6397, and for two other neutron stars in clusters observed by ESA’s XMM-Newton.
Four other neutron stars were observed with RXTE to undergo bursts of X-rays that cause the atmosphere of the neutron star to expand. By following the cooling of the star, its surface area can be calculated. Then, by folding in independent estimates of the distance to the neutron star, scientists were able to gather more information on the relationships between the masses and radii of these neutron stars.
Because the mass and radius of a neutron star is directly related to interactions between the particles in the interior of the star, the latest results give scientists new information about the inner workings of neutron stars.
The researchers used a wide range of different models for the structure of these collapsed objects and determined that the radius of a neutron star with a mass that is 1.4 times the mass of the Sun is between 10.4 and 12.9 km (6.5 to 8.0 miles). They also estimated the density at the center of a neutron star was about 8 times that of nuclear matter found in Earth-like conditions. This translates into a pressure that is over ten trillion trillion times the pressure required for diamonds to form inside the Earth.
The results apply whether the entire set of bursting sources, or the most extreme of the other sources, are removed from the sample. Previous studies have used smaller samples of neutron stars or have not accounted for as many uncertainties in using the models.
The new values for the neutron star's structure should hold true even if matter composed of free quarks exists in the core of the star. Quarks are fundamental particles that combine to form protons and neutrons and are not usually found in isolation. It has been postulated that free quarks may exist inside the centers of neutron stars, but no firm evidence for this has ever been found.
The researchers also made an estimate of the distances between neutrons and protons in atomic nuclei here on earth. A larger neutron star radius naturally implies that, on average, neutrons and protons in a heavy nucleus are farther apart. Their estimate is being compared with values from terrestrial experiments.
The neutron star observations also provided new information about the so-called "symmetry energy" for nuclear matter, which is the energy cost required to create a system with a different number of protons than neutrons. The symmetry energy is important for neutron stars because they contain almost ten times as many neutrons as protons. It is also important for heavy atoms on Earth, like Uranium, because they often have more neutrons than protons. The results show that the symmetry energy does not change much with density.
These results will be published in a paper in the March 1st, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The authors are Andrew Steiner, from the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington, James Lattimer from Stony Brook University in New York and Edward Brown from Michigan State University.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/47tuc/
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Michigan State/A.Steiner et al
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows the central region of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A, for short) the remains of a massive star that exploded in our galaxy. Evidence for a thin carbon atmosphere on a neutron star at the center of Cas A has been found.
Besides resolving a ten-year-old mystery about the nature of this object, this result provides a vivid demonstration of the extreme nature of neutron stars. An artist's impression of the carbon-cloaked neutron star is also shown.
Discovered in Chandra's "First Light" image obtained in 1999, the point-like X-ray source at the center of Cas A was presumed to be a neutron star, the typical remnant of an exploded star, but it surprisingly did not show any evidence for X-ray or radio pulsations. By applying a model of a neutron star with a carbon atmosphere to this object, it was found that the region emitting X-rays would uniformly cover a typical neutron star. This would explain the lack of X-ray pulsations because this neutron star would be unlikely to display any changes in its intensity as it rotates. The result also provides evidence against the possibility that the collapsed star contains strange quark matter.
The properties of this carbon atmosphere are remarkable. It is only about four inches thick, has a density similar to diamond and a pressure more than ten times that found at the center of the Earth. As with the Earth's atmosphere, the extent of an atmosphere on a neutron star is proportional to the atmospheric temperature and inversely proportional to the surface gravity. The temperature is estimated to be almost two million degrees, much hotter than the Earth's atmosphere. However, the surface gravity on Cas A is 100 billion times stronger than on Earth, resulting in an incredibly thin atmosphere.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/cassio/
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Southampton/W. Ho et al.
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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The High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAO)-1, launched on August 12 1977, aboard an Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle. Here, the observatory is shown during final assembly at TRW Systems of Redondo Beach, Calif. The idea for an observatory that could record images of astronomical objects that emit high-energy particles was conceived at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., which managed the project. HEAO surveyed the sky for additional x-ray and gamma-ray sources as well as pinpointing their positions. HEAO and its two companion observatories, HEAO-2 and HEAO-3, also managed by the Marshall Center, laid the foundation for the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which just celebrated 14 years of space operations last month. The HEAO observatories and Chandra underwent testing at Marshall's unique X-ray and Cryogenic test facility.
Image credit: NASA/MSFC
Original image:
www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/gallery/msfc_iow_22...
More Marshall history images:
www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/gallery/marshall_hi...
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Description: This Great Observatories view of the famous Sombrero galaxy was made using Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer. The main figure shows the combined image from the three telescopes, while the inset images show the separate observatory views. Chandra's X-ray image (in blue) shows hot gas in the galaxy and point sources that are a mixture of objects within the galaxy and quasars in the background. Hubble's optical image (green) reveals the bulge of starlight partially blocked by a rim of dust, which glows brightly in Spitzer's infrared view.
Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray
Date: 2007
Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2007/sombrero/
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Collection: Normal Galaxies and Starburst Galaxies Collection
Gift line: X-ray: NASA/UMass/Q.D.Wang et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/AURA/Hubble Heritage; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. AZ/R.Kennicutt/SINGS Team
Accession number: sombrero
A team of astronomers has discovered enormous arms of hot gas in the Coma cluster of galaxies by using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. These features, which span at least half a million light years, provide insight into how the Coma cluster has grown through mergers of smaller groups and clusters of galaxies to become one of the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity.
A new composite image, with Chandra data in pink and optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey appearing in white and blue, features these spectacular arms. In this image, the Chandra data have been processed so extra detail can be seen.
The X-ray emission is from multimillion-degree gas and the optical data shows galaxies in the Coma Cluster, which contain only about one-sixth the mass in hot gas. Only the brightest X-ray emission is shown here, to emphasize the arms, but the hot gas is present over the entire field of view.
Researchers think that these arms were most likely formed when smaller galaxy clusters had their gas stripped away by the head wind created by the motion of the cluster through the hot gas, in much the same way that the headwind created by a roller coaster blows the hats off riders.
Coma is an unusual galaxy cluster because it contains not one, but two giant elliptical galaxies near its center. These two giant elliptical galaxies are probably the vestiges from each of the two largest clusters that merged with Coma in the past. The researchers also uncovered other signs of past collisions and mergers in the data.
From their length, and the speed of sound in the hot gas (about four million km/hr), the newly discovered X-ray arms are estimated to be about 300 million years old, and they appear to have a rather smooth shape. This gives researchers some clues about the conditions of the hot gas in Coma. Most theoretical models expect that mergers between clusters like those in Coma will produce strong turbulence, like ocean water that has been churned by many passing ships. Instead, the smooth shape of these lengthy arms points to a rather calm setting for the hot gas in the Coma cluster, even after many mergers.
Large-scale magnetic fields are likely responsible for the small amount of turbulence that is present in Coma. Estimating the amount of turbulence in a galaxy cluster has been a challenging problem for astrophysicists. Researchers have found a range of answers, some of them conflicting, and so observations of other clusters are needed.
Two of the arms appear to be connected to a group of galaxies located about two million light years from the center of Coma. One or both of these arms connects to a larger structure seen in the XMM-Newton data, and spans a distance or at least 1.5 million light years. A very thin tail also appears behind one of the galaxies in Coma. This is probably evidence of gas being stripped from a single galaxy, in addition to the groups or clusters that have merged there.
These new results on the Coma cluster, which incorporate over six days worth of Chandra observing time, will appear in the September 20, 2013, issue of the journal Science. The first author of the paper is Jeremy Sanders from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. The co-authors are Andy Fabian from Cambridge University in the UK; Eugene Churazov from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany; Alexander Schekochihin from University of Oxford in the UK; Aurora Simionescu from Stanford University in Stanford, CA; Stephen Walker from Cambridge University in the UK and Norbert Werner from Stanford University in Stanford, CA.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.etts at Amherst, MA and Roman Shcherbakov from University of Maryland, in College Park, MD.
Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/coma/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MPE/J. Sanders et al; Optical: SDSS
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
For the first time, a multiwavelength three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction of a supernova remnant has been created. This stunning visualization of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), the result of an explosion approximately 330 years ago, uses X-ray data from Chandra, infrared data from Spitzer and pre-existing optical data from NOAO's 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak and the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT 2.4-meter telescope. In this visualization, the green region is mostly iron observed in X-rays. The yellow region is a combination of argon and silicon seen in X-rays, optical, and infrared -- including jets of silicon -- plus outer debris seen in the optical. The red region is cold debris seen in the infrared. Finally, the blue reveals the outer blast wave, most prominently detected in X-rays.
Credit:
NASA/CXC/MIT/T.Delaney et al.
View full caption AND view video:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/video09-001...
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!