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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.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Tsinghua Univ./H. Feng et al.
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In the summer of 2022, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope released images from some of its earliest observations with the newly commissioned telescope. Almost instantaneously, these stunning images landed everywhere from the front pages of news outlets to larger-than-life displays in Times Square.
Webb, however, will not pursue its exploration of the universe on its own. It is designed to work in concert with NASA's many other telescopes as well as facilities both in space and on the ground. These new versions of Webb’s first images combine its infrared data with X-rays collected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, underscoring how the power of any of these telescopes is only enhanced when joined with others.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
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Read more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory
At a distance of only 200,000 light years, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. With its millions of stars, the SMC offers astronomers a chance to study phenomena across the stellar life cycle. In various regions of the SMC, massive stars and supernovas are creating expanding envelopes of dust and gas. Evidence for these structures is found in optical (red) and radio (green) data in this composite image.
Astronomers used Chandra to peer into one particular region of clouds of gas and plasma where stars are forming. This area, known as LHa115-N19 or N19 for short, is filled with ionized hydrogen gas and it is where many massive stars are expelling dust and gas through stellar winds. When the X-ray data (blue and purple) are combined with the other wavelengths, researchers find evidence for the formation of a so-called superbubble. Superbubbles are formed when smaller structures from individual stars and supernovas combine into one giant cavity.
The Chandra data show evidence for three supernova explosions in this relatively small region. Furthermore, the Chandra observations suggest that each of these supernova remnants were caused by a similar process: the collapse of a very massive star. There are hints that these stars were members of a so-called OB association, a group of stars that formed from the same interstellar cloud.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/UIUC/R.Williams et al.; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS coll.; Radio: ATCA/UIUC/R.Williams et al.
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Evidence for a recoiling black hole was found using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble, XMM-Newton, and several ground-based telescopes. This black hole kickback was caused either by a slingshot effect produced in a triple black hole system, or from the effects of gravitational waves produced after two supermassive black holes merged a few million years earlier. Of the 2,600 X-ray sources found in this survey, only CID-42 coincides with two very close, compact optical sources. In this 2010 image, the two sources are too close for Chandra to resolve separately.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al.
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A dramatic Chandra image from 2008 of the nearby galaxy Centaurus A provides one of the best views to date of the effects of an active supermassive black hole. Opposing jets of high-energy particles can be seen extending to the outer reaches of the galaxy, and numerous smaller black holes in binary star systems are also visible.
The image was made from an ultra-deep look at the galaxy Centaurus A, equivalent to more than seven days of continuous observations. Centaurus A is the nearest galaxy to Earth that contains a supermassive black hole actively powering a jet.
A prominent X-ray jet extending for 13,000 light years points to the upper left in the image, with a shorter "counterjet" aimed in the opposite direction. Astronomers think that such jets are important vehicles for transporting energy from the black hole to the much larger dimensions of a galaxy, and affecting the rate at which stars form there.
High-energy electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines produce the X-ray emission from the jet and counterjet. This emission quickly saps the energy from the electrons, so they must be continually reaccelerated or the X-rays will fade out. Knot-like features in the jets detected in the Chandra image show where the acceleration of particles to high energies is currently occurring, and provides important clues to understanding the process that accelerates the electrons to near-light speeds.
This year, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory celebrates its 20th year in space exploring the extreme universe.
Credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al
When a thermonuclear explosion destroyed a white dwarf star (the dense final stage in the evolution of a Sun-like star) in a double star system and produced a supernova, it left behind this glowing debris field, called a supernova remnant. The Chandra X-ray Observatory data (most clearly visible on the left side of the remnant in red, green and blue) shows multimillion-degree gas that has been heated by a shock wave produced by the explosion that destroyed the star. An optical light image from the Hubble Space Telescope is brightest on the right side of the image, where the overlap with X-rays is mostly in pink and white. This image is part of a collection of archiveed images made by “astronomy artist” Judy Schmidt, to help recognize #ArchivesMonth.
This year, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory celebrates its 20th year in space exploring the extreme universe.
Image credit: Enhanced Image by Judy Schmidt (CC BY-NC-SA) based on images provided courtesy of NASA/CXC/SAO & NASA/STScI.
More about Chandra's 20th Anniversary
On July 23, 1999, the Space Shuttle Columbia blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center carrying the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In the two decades that have passed, Chandra’s powerful and unique X-ray eyes have contributed to a revolution in our understanding of the cosmos.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is commemorating its 20th anniversary with an assembly of new images. These images represent the breadth of Chandra’s exploration, demonstrating the variety of objects it studies as well as how X-rays complement the data collected in other types of light.
Stars come in different sizes and masses. Our Sun is an average-sized star that will have a lifespan of some 10 billion years. More massive stars, like those found in Cygnus OB2, only last a few million years. During their lifetimes, they blast large amounts of high-energy winds into their surroundings. These violent winds can collide or produce shocks in the gas and dust around the stars, depositing large amounts of energy that produce X-ray emission that Chandra can detect.
In this composite image of Cygnus OB2, X-rays from Chandra (red diffuse emission and blue point sources) are shown with optical data from the Isaac Newton Telescope (diffuse emission in light blue) and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (orange).
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Drake et al; H-alpha: Univ. of Hertfordshire/INT/IPHAS; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer
This 2002 Chandra image of the Centaurus galaxy cluster shows a long plume-like feature resembling a twisted sheet. The plume is some 70,000 light years in length and has a temperature of about 10 million degrees Celsius. It is several million degrees cooler than the hot gas around it, as seen in this temperature-coded image in which the sequence red, yellow, green, blue indicates increasing gas temperatures. The cluster is about 170 million light years from Earth.
The plume contains a mass comparable to 1 billion suns. It may have formed by gas cooling from the cluster onto the moving target of the central galaxy, as seen by Chandra in the Abell 1795 cluster. Other possibilities are that the plume consists of debris stripped from a galaxy which fell into the cluster, or that it is gas pushed out of the center of the cluster by explosive activity in the central galaxy. A problem with these ideas is that the plume has the same concentration of heavy elements such as oxygen, silicon, and iron as the surrounding hot gas.
Image credit: NASA/IoA/J.Sanders & A.Fabian
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The supernova of 393 AD was recorded by the Chinese and was visible for about 8 months, reaching the brightness of Jupiter. There are several supernova remnants within this region, so it is difficult to identify the remnant of SN 393 AD with certainty. X-rays from G347.3-0.5 are dominated by radiation from extremely high-energy electrons in a magnetized shell rather than radiation from a hot gas. The remnant, seen by Chandra in 2007 (inset box) and XMM-Newton, is also a source of very high-energy gamma rays. The bright, point-like source on the lower right in the image (which shows only the upper portion of the entire remnant) is similar to other known neutron stars and indicates that G347.3-0.5 is the remnant of a core-collapse supernova.
Image credit: Chandra: NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane et al.; XMM-Newton:ESA/RIKEN/J.Hiraga et al.)
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A newly discovered cosmic object may help provide answers to some long-standing questions about how black holes evolve and influence their surroundings, according to a new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Read more:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/intriguing-member-of-black-hole-family-tree
Image Credit:
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/M.Mezcua et al & NASA/CXC/INAF/A.Wolter
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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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Chandra observations of the spiral galaxy M101 and several other nearby galaxies have revealed a possible new class of X-ray sources. These mysterious X-ray sources, marked with green diamonds in the image, are called "quasisoft" sources because they have a temperature in the range of one to four million degrees Celsius.
The power output of quasisoft sources is comparable to or greater than that of neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes fueled by the infall of matter from companion stars. This implies that the region that produces the X-rays in a quasisoft source is dozens of times larger.
One explanation is that these sources are produced by intermediate-mass black holes that have masses a hundred or more times greater than the mass of the Sun.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/R.DiStefano et al.
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The cluster of galaxies EMSS 1358+6245 about 4 billion light year away in the constellation Draco is shown in this 2001 Chandra image. When combined with Chandra's X-ray spectrum, this image allowed scientists to determine that the mass of dark matter in the cluster is about 4 times that of normal matter.
The relative percentage of dark matter increases toward the center of the cluster. Measuring the exact amount of the increase enabled astronomers to set limits on the rate at which the dark matter particles collide with each other in the cluster. This information is extremely important to scientists in their quest to understand the nature of dark matter, which is thought to be the most common form of matter in the universe.
Image credit: NASA/MIT/J.Arabadjis et al.
In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an exclusive family of exotic objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory help support the idea that it is also a pulsar, meaning it emits regular pulses of light.
Magnetars are a type of neutron star, an incredibly dense object mainly made up of tightly packed neutron, which forms from the collapsed core of a massive star during a supernova.
What sets magnetars apart from other neutron stars is that they also have the most powerful known magnetic fields in the universe. For context, the strength of our planet’s magnetic field has a value of about one Gauss, while a refrigerator magnet measures about 100 Gauss. Magnetars, on the other hand, have magnetic fields of about a million billion Gauss. If a magnetar was located a sixth of the way to the Moon (about 40,000 miles), it would wipe the data from all of the credit cards on Earth.
On March 12, 2020, astronomers detected a new magnetar with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope. This is only the 31st known magnetar, out of the approximately 3,000 known neutron stars.
After follow-up observations, researchers determined that this object, dubbed J1818.0-1607, was special for other reasons. First, it may be the youngest known magnetar, with an age estimated to be about 500 years old. This is based on how quickly the rotation rate is slowing and the assumption that it was born spinning much faster. Secondly, it also spins faster than any previously discovered magnetar, rotating once around every 1.4 seconds.
Other astronomers have also observed J1818.0-1607 with radio telescopes, such as the NSF’s Karl Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), and determined that it gives off radio waves. This implies that it also has properties similar to that of a typical “rotation-powered pulsar,” a type of neutron star that gives off beams of radiation that are detected as repeating pulses of emission as it rotates and slows down. Only five magnetars including this one have been recorded to also act like pulsars, constituting less than 0.2% of the known neutron star population.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of West Virginia/H. Blumer; Infrared (Spitzer and Wise): NASA/JPL-CalTech/Spitzer
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Chandra's X-ray 2007 image of the neutron star in Circinus X-1. Low energy X-rays are shown in red, medium energy X-rays in green and high energies in blue. The jet itself is seen to the upper right corner and consists of two fingers of X-ray emission (shown in red) separated by about 30 degrees. These two fingers, located at least about 5 light years from the neutron star, may represent the outer walls of a wide jet. Alternatively, they may represent two separate, highly collimated jets produced at different times by a precessing neutron star. That is, the neutron star may wobble like a top as it spins and the jet fires at different angles at different times. The structures on the opposite side (to the lower left) may be evidence for counter jets. The rest of the colored areas surrounding the bright central source are instrumental artifacts and not representative of structures associated with Circinus X-1.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison/S.Heintz et al.
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This 2002 400 by 900 light-year mosaic of several Chandra images of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy reveals hundreds of white dwarf stars, neutron stars, and black holes bathed in an incandescent fog of multimillion-degree gas. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Galaxy is located inside the bright white patch in the center of the image. The colors indicate X-ray energy bands - red (low), green (medium), and blue (high).
The mosaic gives a new perspective on how the turbulent Galactic Center region affects the evolution of the Galaxy as a whole. This hot gas appears to be escaping from the center into the rest of the Galaxy. The outflow of gas, chemically enriched from the frequent destruction of stars, will distribute these elements into the galactic suburbs. Because it is only about 26,000 light years from Earth, the center of our Galaxy provides an excellent laboratory to learn about the cores of other galaxies.
Image credit: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al.
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Chandra's 2005 image of the star cluster Trumpler 14 shows about 1,600 stars and a diffuse glow from hot multimillion degree X-ray producing gas. The cluster has one of the highest concentrations of massive, luminous stars in the Galaxy. Located on the edge of a giant molecular cloud, it is part of the Carina Complex which contains at least 8 star clusters.
The bright stars in Trumpler 14 are young (about 1 million years old), and much more massive than the Sun. They will shine brightly, exhaust their prodigious energy, and explode spectacularly as supernovas in a few million years.
In the meantime, the young, massive stars have a profound influence on their environment through the ionizing effects of their light, and the high-speed winds of particles that are pushed away from their surfaces by the intense radiation. Shock waves that develop in these winds can heat gas to millions of degrees Celsius and produce intense X-ray sources. In the accompanying image (below, right), the bright white source in the center of the wide-field image (above) has been resolved to reveal several massive stars.
On a larger scale, stellar winds can carve out cavities in the clouds of gas and dust that surround the stars, and trigger the formation of new stars. These cavities are filled with million-degree gas that produce the diffuse X-ray glow in the image.
The glow in the lower, rectangular part of the image (the gap between the upper and lower portions of the image is an instrumental artifact) is from a gas cloud that has been enriched with oxygen, neon, silicon and iron. This probably marks the final contribution of a once-bright star that exploded as a supernova thousands of years ago, and in the process dispersed these heavy elements into the interstellar medium.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/PSU/L.Townsley et al.
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This is a 2000 X-ray image of the elliptical galaxy NGC 0533 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/U. Ohio/T.Statler & S.Diehl
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A new project using sonification turns astronomical images from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other telescopes into sound. This allows users to "listen" to the center of the Milky Way as observed in X-ray, optical, and infrared light. As the cursor moves across the image, sounds represent the position and brightness of the sources.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: Spitzer NASA/JPL-Caltech
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This new multiwavelength image of the Crab Nebula combines X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (in blue) with visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope (in yellow) and infrared light seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope (in red). This particular combination of light from across the electromagnetic spectrum highlights the nested structure of the pulsar wind nebula. The X-rays reveal the beating heart of the Crab, the neutron-star remnant from the supernova explosion seen almost a thousand years ago. This neutron star is the super-dense collapsed core of an exploded star and is now a pulsar that rotates at a blistering rate of 30 times per second. A disk of X-ray-emitting material, spewing jets of high-energy particles perpendicular to the disk, surrounds the pulsar. The infrared light in this image shows synchrotron radiation, formed from streams of charged particles spiraling around the pulsar's strong magnetic fields. The visible light is emission from oxygen that has been heated by higher-energy (ultraviolet and X-ray) synchrotron radiation. The delicate tendrils seen in visible light form what astronomers call a "cage" around the rich tapestry of synchrotron radiation, which in turn encompasses the energetic fury of the X-ray disk and jets. These multiwavelength interconnected structures illustrate that the pulsar is the main energy source for the emission seen by all three telescopes. The Crab Nebula resides 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and J. DePasquale (STScI) and R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC)
Several hundred million years ago, two galaxy clusters collided and then passed through each other. This mighty event released a flood of hot gas from each galaxy cluster that formed an unusual bridge between the two objects. This bridge is now being pummeled by particles driven away from a supermassive black hole.
Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe held together by gravity. They contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, vast amounts of multi-million-degree gas that glow in X-rays, and enormous reservoirs of unseen dark matter.
The system known as Abell 2384 shows the giant structures that can result when two galaxy clusters collide. A superheated gas bridge in Abell 2384 is shown in this composite image of X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton (blue), as well as the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India (red). This new multi-wavelength view reveals the effects of a jet shooting away from a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy in one of the clusters. The jet is so powerful that it is bending the shape of the gas bridge, which extends for over 3 million light years and has the mass of about 6 trillion Suns.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/V.Parekh, et al. & ESA/XMM; Radio: NCRA/GMRT
This striking 2003 Chandra image of supernova remnant SNR 0103-72.6 reveals a nearly perfect ring about 150 light years in diameter surrounding a cloud of gas enriched in oxygen and shock heated to millions of degrees Celsius. The ring marks the outer limits of a shock wave produced as material ejected in the supernova explosion plows into the interstellar gas. The size of the ring indicates that we see the supernova remnant as it was about 10,000 years after its progenitor star exploded.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/PSU/S.Park et al.
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Chandra's 2004 mosaic of images of the Fornax cluster reveals that the vast cloud of ten-million-degree Celsius gas around the giant elliptical galaxy at the cluster's core (labeled "NGC 1399") with a swept-back cometary shape that extends for more than half a million light years. This geometry suggests that the hot gas cloud is moving through a larger, but less dense cloud of gas that creates an intergalactic headwind. The core motion, combined with optical observations of the motion of a group of galaxies falling toward the core, indicates that the cluster lies along a large, unseen, filamentary structure composed mostly of dark matter. Most galaxies, gas, and dark matter in the universe are thought to be concentrated in such filaments, and galaxy clusters are thought to form where the filaments intersect. Two other bright galaxies in the cluster, NGC 1404 and NGC 1387, are also, labeled.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Columbia U./C.Scharf et al.
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This 2007 Chandra image reveals how the DEM L238 supernova appears in the three bands of X-ray emission (low energy X-rays are shown in red, medium energies in green and high energies in blue.) The central region of DEM L238 is green which indicates that it is rich in iron. This overabundance of iron identifies this object as a so-called Type Ia supernova, one possible explosive death of a star.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/NCSU/K.Borkowski
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This composite image shows the central regions of the nearby Circinus galaxy, located about 12 million light years away. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown in blue and data from the Hubble Space telescope is shown in yellow ("I-band"), red (hydrogen emission), cyan ("V-band") and light blue (oxygen emission). The bright, blue source near the lower right hand corner of the image is the supernova SN 1996cr, that was finally identified over a decade after it exploded.
Image credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Columbia/F.Bauer et al); Optical (NASA/STScI/UMD/A.Wilson et al.)
H1821+643 is a quasar powered by a supermassive black hole, located about 3.4 billion light years from Earth. Astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to determine the spin of the black hole in H1821+643, making it the most massive one to have an accurate measurement of this fundamental property, as described in our press release. Astronomers estimate the actively growing black hole in H1821+643 contains between about three and 30 billion solar masses, making it one of the most massive known. By contrast the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy weighs about four million suns.
This composite image of H1821+643 contains X-rays from Chandra (blue) that have been combined with radio data from NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (red) and an optical image from the PanSTARRS telescope on Hawaii (white and yellow). The researchers used nearly a week's worth of Chandra observing time, taken over two decades ago, to obtain this latest result. The supermassive black hole is located in the bright dot in the center of the radio and X-ray emission.
Because a spinning black hole drags space around with it and allows matter to orbit closer to it than is possible for a non-spinning one, the X-ray data can show how fast the black hole is spinning. The spectrum — that is, the amount of energy as a function wavelength — of H1821+643 indicates that the black hole is rotating at a modest rate compared to other, less massive ones that spin close to the speed of light. This is the most accurate spin measurement for such a massive black hole.
Why is the black hole in H1821+432 spinning only about half as fast as the lower mass cousins? The answer may lie in how these supermassive black holes grow and evolve. This relatively slow spin supports the idea that the most massive black holes like H1821+643 undergo most of their growth by merging with other black holes, or by gas being pulled inwards in random directions when their large disks are disrupted.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/J. Sisk-Reynés et al.; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA; Optical: PanSTARRS
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Chandra and XMM-Newton 2004 observations of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri have shown that its surface is in a state of turmoil. Flares, or explosive outbursts, occur almost continually. This behavior can be traced to Proxima Centauri's low mass, about a tenth that of the Sun. In the cores of low mass stars, nuclear fusion reactions that convert hydrogen to helium proceed very slowly, and create a turbulent, convective motion throughout their interiors. This motion stores up magnetic energy which is often released explosively in the star's upper atmosphere where it produces flares in X-rays and other forms of light.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO
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cluster RCW 38 is a relatively close star-forming region. This 2003 image covers an area about 5 light years across, and contains thousands of hot, very young stars formed less than a million years ago. X-rays from the hot upper atmospheres of 190 of these stars were detected by Chandra.
In addition to the point-like emission from stars, the Chandra image revealed a diffuse cloud of X-rays enveloping the star cluster. The X-ray spectrum of the cloud shows an excess of high-energy X-rays, which indicates that the X-rays come from trillion-volt electrons moving in a magnetic field. Such particles are typically produced by exploding stars, or in the strong magnetic fields around neutron stars or black holes, none of which is evident in RCW 38.
One possible origin for the high-energy electrons is an undetected supernova that occurred in the cluster. Although direct evidence for such a supernova could have faded away thousands of years ago, a shock wave or a rapidly rotating neutron star produced by the outburst could be acting in concert with particles evaporating off the young stars to produce the high energy electrons.
Regardless of the origin of the energetic electrons, their presence could change the chemistry of the disks that will eventually form planets around stars in the cluster. For example, in our own solar system, we find evidence of certain short-lived radioactive nuclei (Aluminum 26 being the most well known). This implies the existence of a high-energy process late in the evolution of our solar system. If our solar system was immersed for a time in a sea of energetic particles, this could explain the rare nuclides present in meteorites found on Earth today.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk et al.
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Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are uncovering secrets of some of the most mysterious and exciting X-ray spewing objects in the universe.
To read the full story, click here.
Flickr friends - check out this amazing display of fireworks seen from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory!
While fireworks only last a short time here on Earth, a bundle of cosmic sparklers in a nearby cluster of stars will be going off for a very long time. NGC 1333 is a star cluster populated with many young stars that are less than 2 million years old, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms for stars like the Sun expected to burn for billions of years.
This new composite image combines X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) with infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red) as well as optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey and the National Optical Astronomical Observatories’ Mayall 4-meter telescope on Kitt Peak (red, green, blue). The Chandra data reveal 95 young stars glowing in X-ray light, 41 of which had not been identified previously using infrared observations with Spitzer because they lacked infrared emission from a surrounding disk.
To make a detailed study of the X-ray properties of young stars, a team of astronomers, led by Elaine Winston from the University of Exeter, analyzed both the Chandra X-ray data of NGC 1333, located about 780 light years from Earth, and of the Serpens cloud, a similar cluster of young stars about 1100 light years away. They then compared the two datasets with observations of the young stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster, perhaps the most-studied young star cluster in the Galaxy.
The researchers found that the X-ray brightness of the stars in NGC 1333 and the Serpens cloud depends on the total brightness of the stars across the electromagnetic spectrum, as found in previous studies of other clusters. They also found that the X-ray brightness mainly depends on the size of the star. In other words, the bigger the stellar sparkler, the brighter it will glow in X-rays.
These results were published in the July 2010 issue of the Astronomical Journal and are 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.
JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/S.Wolk et al; Optical: DSS & NOAO/AURA/NSF; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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In this 2004 image, the X-rays observed by Chandra from the quasar SDSSp J1306 (or J1306) have taken 12.7 billion light years to reach Earth, only a billion years less than the estimated 13.7-billion-year age of the Universe. Surprisingly, the distribution of X-rays with energy - the X-ray spectrum - in this early epoch quasar is indistinguishable from that of nearby, older quasars. The smaller object in the upper left of the image is a foreground galaxy.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/D.Schwartz & S.Virani
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #ChandraXrayObservatory #cxo #star #nebula #quasar
Space is mostly quiet. Data collected by telescopes is most often turned into silent charts, plots, and images. A “sonification” project led by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA’s Universe of Learning program transforms otherwise inaudible data from some of the world’s most powerful telescopes into sound. This effort makes it possible to experience data from cosmic sources with a different sense: hearing.
The giant black hole in Messier 87 (M87 for short) and its surroundings have been studied for many years and by a range of telescopes including Chandra (blue) and the Very Large Array (red and orange). This data shows that the black hole in M87 is sending out massive jets of energetic particles that interact with vast clouds of hot gas that surround it. To translate the X-rays and radio waves into sound, the image is scanned beginning at the 3 o’clock position and sweeping clockwise like a radar. Light farther from the center is heard as higher pitched while brighter light is louder. The radio data are lower pitched than the X-rays, corresponding to their frequency ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum. The point-like sources in X-ray light, most of which represent stars in orbit around a black hole or neutron star, are played as short, plucked sounds.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/U. Ohio/T.Statler & S.Diehl
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This panel of images represents a survey that used data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to uncover hundreds of previously “hidden” black holes. This result helps astronomers conduct a more accurate census of supermassive black holes that exist in the centers of most large galaxies, as reported in our latest press release.
This graphic shows two of the galaxies from the new study, with Chandra X-ray data in purple and optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in red, green and blue. These black holes were found in galaxies that are dim in optical light, but bright in X-rays. Astronomers have dubbed these “XBONGs” (for X-ray bright, optically normal galaxies). While scientists have been aware of XBONGs for several decades, an explanation for their unusual properties has been unclear.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/D. Kim et al.; Optical/IR: Legacy Surveys/D. Lang (Perimeter Institute)
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This image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes shows an extremely long beam, or filament, of matter and antimatter extending from a relatively tiny pulsar, as reported in our latest press release. With its tremendous scale, this beam may help explain the surprisingly large numbers of positrons, the antimatter counterparts to electrons, scientists have detected throughout the Milky Way galaxy.
The panel on the left displays about one third the length of the beam from the pulsar known as PSR J2030+4415 (J2030 for short), which is located about 1,600 light years from Earth. J2030 is a dense, city-sized object that formed from the collapse of a massive star and currently spins about three times per second. X-rays from Chandra (blue) show where particles flowing from the pulsar along magnetic field lines are moving at about a third the speed of light. A close-up view of the pulsar in the right panel shows the X-rays created by particles flying around the pulsar itself. As the pulsar moves through space at about a million miles an hour, some of these particles escape and create the long filament. In both panels, optical light data from the Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii have been used and appear red, brown, and black.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries; Optical: NSF/AURA/Gemini Consortium
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In Jansky Very Large Array images of this cluster, seven gravitationally-lensed sources are observed, all point sources or sources that are barely larger than points. This makes MACS J0717 the cluster with the highest number of known lensed radio sources. Two of these lensed sources are also detected in the Chandra image.
All of the lensed radio sources are galaxies located between 7.8 and 10.4 billion light years away from Earth. The brightness of the galaxies at radio wavelengths shows that they contain stars forming at high rates. Without the amplification by lensing, some of these radio sources would be too faint to detect with typical radio observations. The two lensed X-ray sources detected in the Chandra images are likely active galactic nuclei (AGN) at the center of galaxies. AGN are compact, luminous sources powered by gas heated to millions of degrees as it falls toward supermassive black holes. These two X-ray sources would have been detected without lensing but would have been two or three times fainter.
The large arcs of radio emission in MACS J0717 are very different from those in MACS J0416 because of shock waves arising from the multiple collisions occurring in the former object. The X-ray emission in MACS J0717 has more clumps because there are four clusters violently colliding.
Georgiana Ogrean, who was at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics while leading the work on MACS J0416 research, is currently at Stanford University. The paper describing these results was published in the October 20th, 2015 issue of the Astrophysical Journal and is available online. The research on MACS J0717 was led by Reinout van Weeren from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and was published in the February 1st, 2016 issue of 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.
Read More from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this 2009 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.
In this image, the lowest energy X-rays that Chandra detects are red, the medium range is green, and the most energetic ones are colored blue. Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1,700 years old and is located about 17,000 light years away.
Neutron stars are created when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse. B1509 is spinning completely around almost 7 times every second and is releasing energy into its environment at a prodigious rate -- presumably because it has an intense magnetic field at its surface, estimated to be 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.
The combination of rapid rotation and ultra-strong magnetic field makes B1509 one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the Galaxy. This generator drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the neutron star. As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, they radiate away their energy and create the elaborate nebula seen by Chandra.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane, et al.
Editor's Note: A larger version of the image I posted earlier. By request. :)
A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by NASA's Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red).
The collision, which began more than 100 million years ago and is still occurring, has triggered the formation of millions of stars in clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The most massive of these young stars have already sped through their evolution in a few million years and exploded as supernovas.
The X-ray image from Chandra shows huge clouds of hot, interstellar gas that have been injected with rich deposits of elements from supernova explosions. This enriched gas, which includes elements such as oxygen, iron, magnesium and silicon, will be incorporated into new generations of stars and planets. The bright, point-like sources in the image are produced by material falling onto black holes and neutron stars that are remnants of the massive stars. Some of these black holes may have masses that are almost one hundred times that of the Sun.
The Spitzer data show infrared light from warm dust clouds that have been heated by newborn stars, with the brightest clouds lying in the overlap region between the two galaxies. The Hubble data reveal old stars in red, filaments of dust in brown and star-forming regions in yellow and white. Many of the fainter objects in the optical image are clusters containing thousands of stars.
The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms," seen in wide-angle views of the system. These features were produced by tidal forces generated in the collision.
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/antennae/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI
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 Chandra X-ray spectrum of Mkn 421 provides strong evidence that a large fraction of the atoms and ions in the Universe are located in the cosmic web, and may point to the solution of the "missing matter" problem. The missing mass problem - not related to dark matter or dark energy - was discovered when various measurements gave astronomers a good estimate of the number of atoms and ions in the Universe 10 billion years ago.
This 2005 Chandra X-ray image of Mkn 421, a quasar located 400 million light years from Earth, was taken with the High Resolution Camera (HRC) on July 1, 2003.
Image credit: NASA/SAO/CXC/F.Nicastro et al.
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About 4,000 light years from Earth lies RCW 108, a region where stars are actively forming within the Milky Way galaxy. The region contains young star clusters, including one that is deeply embedded in a cloud of molecular hydrogen. By using data from different telescopes, astronomers determined that star birth in this region is being triggered by the effect of nearby, massive young stars.
This image is a composite of X-ray data from Chandra (blue) and infrared emission detected by Spitzer (red and orange). More than 400 X-ray sources were identified in Chandra's observations of RCW 108. About 90% of these X-ray sources are thought to be part of the cluster and not stars that lie in the field-of-view either behind or in front of it. Many of the stars in RCW 108 are experiencing the violent flaring seen in other young star-forming regions such as Orion. Gas and dust blocks much of the X-rays from the juvenile stars located in the center of the image, explaining the relative dearth of Chandra sources in this part of the image. The Spitzer data show the location of the embedded star cluster, which appears as the bright knot of red and orange just to the left of the center of the image. Some stars from a larger cluster, known as NGC 6193, are also visible on the left side of the image. Astronomers think that the dense clouds within RCW 108 are in the process of being destroyed by intense radiation emanating from hot and massive stars in NGC 6193.
Taken together, the Chandra and Spitzer data indicate that there are more massive star candidates than expected in this several areas of this image. This suggests that pockets within RCW 108 underwent localized episodes of star formation.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This X-ray image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows activity from the central black hole in galaxy 3C305. Unexpectedly, Chandra's X-ray data does not appear to align with radio emission detected by the Very Large Array, but does overlap with the optical emission. Using this information, astronomers believe the X-ray emission is caused either by jets or radiation surrounding the black hole. One of these mechanisms is infusing the interstellar gas with enough energy to cause it to glow in X-ray light.
Image credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/CfA/F.Massaro, et al.
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This 2003 Chandra image shows multimillion degree gas in two galaxies in the Virgo galaxy cluster that are now more than 100,000 light years apart. In NGC 4438, the larger galaxy in the lower part of the image, filaments of hot gas have been pulled to the right of the galaxy. The hot gas in the smaller galaxy, NGC 4435 (upper right), is concentrated around its central region.
Combined X-ray, optical, and radio observations indicate that the two galaxies bumped into each other in the relatively recent past, about 100 million years ago. The collision was apparently a glancing one, in which the galaxies came within about 16,000 light years of each other. Such collisions are relatively common in the crowded confines of the Virgo galaxy cluster. The center of the cluster contains hundreds of galaxies whizzing around at speeds of millions of miles per hour.
During the encounter between NGC4438 and NGC 4435, gravitational tidal forces tugged at the gas and stars on the outer parts of the galaxies. NGC 4438 was damaged in the collision, but the hot gas will probably fall back into the disk of the galaxy in a few hundred million years. NGC 4435, being less massive than NGC 4438, proved to be less crash worthy and appears to have lost most of its hot gas to intergalactic space.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/M.Machacek et al.
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This composite X-ray (blue)/radio (pink) image of the galaxy cluster Abell 400 shows radio jets immersed in a vast cloud of multimillion degree X-ray emitting gas that pervades the cluster. The jets emanate from the vicinity of two supermassive black holes (bright spots in the image). These black holes are in the dumbbell galaxy NGC 1128 (see optical image), which has produced the giant radio source, 3C 75.
The peculiar dumbbell structure of this galaxy is thought to be due to two large galaxies that are in the process of merging. Such mergers are common in the relatively congested environment of galaxy clusters. An alternative hypothesis is that the apparent structure is the result of a coincidence in time when the two galaxies are passing one another, like ships in the cosmic sea.
Careful analysis of the recent Chandra and radio data on 3C 75 indicates that the galaxies and their supermassive black holes are indeed bound together by their mutual gravity. By using the shape and direction of the radio jets, astronomers were able to determine the direction of the motion of the black holes. The swept-back appearance of the radio jets is produced by the rapid motion of the galaxy through the hot gas of the cluster, in much the same way that a motorcyclist's scarf is swept back while speeding down the road.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/AIfA/D.Hudson & T.Reiprich et al.; Radio: NRAO/VLA/NRL
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #ChandraXrayObservatory #cxo #galaxy #blackhole #supermassiveblackhole
A new trio of examples of ‘data sonification’ from NASA missions provides a new method to enjoy an arrangement of cosmic objects. Data sonification translates information collected by various NASA missions -- such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope -- into sounds.
On February 24, 1987, observers in the southern hemisphere saw a new object in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. This was one of the brightest supernova explosions in centuries and soon became known as Supernova 1987A (SN 87A). This time lapse shows a series of Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and Hubble Space Telescope (orange and red) observations taken between 1999 and 2013. This shows a dense ring of gas, which was ejected by the star before it went supernova, begins to glow brighter as the supernova shockwave passes through. As the focus sweeps around the image, the data are converted into the sound of a crystal singing bowl, with brighter light being heard as higher and louder notes. The optical data are converted to a higher range of notes than the X-ray data so both wavelengths of light can be heard simultaneously.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #chandraxrayobservatory #ChandraXRay #cxo #chandra #astronomy #space #astrophysics #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #solarsystemandbeyond #GSFC #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #goddard #Supernova1987A #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #Hubble #Supernova1987A
N49 is a supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Chandra X-ray data shows million-degree gas. Although X-rays reveal a round shell of emission, the X-rays also show brightening in the southeast, confirming the idea of colliding material in that area. Chandra also finds evidence for a so-called soft gamma-ray repeater -- mysterious objects that rapidly emit pulses of high-energy radiation -- within the boundary of N49.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Caltech/S.Kulkarni et al.
#NASAMarshall #Chandra #astronomy #solarsystemandbeyond #supernova
A new trio of examples of ‘data sonification’ from NASA missions provides a new method to enjoy an arrangement of cosmic objects. Data sonification translates information collected by various NASA missions -- such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope -- into sounds.
This image of the Bullet Cluster (officially known as 1E 0657-56) provided the first direct proof of dark matter, the mysterious unseen substance that makes up the vast majority of matter in the Universe. X-rays from Chandra (pink) show where the hot gas in two merging galaxy clusters has been wrenched away from dark matter, seen through a process known as "gravitational lensing" in data from Hubble Space Telescope (blue) and ground-based telescopes. In converting this into sound, the data pan left to right, and each layer of data was limited to a specific frequency range. Data showing dark matter are represented by the lowest frequencies, while X-rays are assigned to the highest frequencies. The galaxies in the image revealed by Hubble data, many of which are in the cluster, are in mid-range frequencies. Then, within each layer, the pitch is set to increase from the bottom of the image to the top so that objects towards the top produce higher tones.
NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #chandraxrayobservatory #ChandraXRay #cxo #chandra #astronomy #space #astrophysics #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #solarsystemandbeyond #darkmatter #gravitationallensing #GSFC #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #goddard #galaxycluster #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #Hubble
The 2002 Chandra image of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1700 shows a flattened oval of multi-million degree gas, supporting the idea that it is the result of a merger of two smaller galaxies about 3 billion years ago. To the lower right, another version of the Chandra image shows only the low-energy X-rays and reveals a giant inner disk. This disk of 6-million degree gas appears light blue in the multicolor image above.
The disk is 90,000 light years in diameter - roughly two-thirds the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy - making it the largest disk of hot gas known. Analysis of the structure of the disk shows that it is rotating and appears to be cooling. The existence of a large, rotating disk of hot gas suggests that NGC 1700 was created by the merger of a rotating spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy containing hot gas.
Image credit: NASA/Ohio U./T.Statler et al.
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A new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has tracked two pairs of supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies on collision courses, as discussed in our latest press release. This is the first evidence for such an impending encounter, providing scientists with important information about the growth of black holes in the early Universe.
By definition, dwarf galaxies contain stars with a total mass less than 3 billion Suns — or about 20 times less than the Milky Way. Astronomers have long suspected that dwarf galaxies merge, particularly in the relatively early Universe, in order to grow into the larger galaxies seen today. However, current technology cannot observe the first generation of dwarf galaxy mergers because they are extraordinarily faint at their great distances. Another tactic — looking for dwarf galaxy mergers closer by — had not been successful to date.
The new study overcame these challenges by implementing a systematic survey of deep Chandra X-ray observations and comparing them with infrared data from NASA’s Wide Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and optical data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).
Chandra was particularly valuable for this study because material surrounding black holes can be heated up to millions of degrees, producing large amounts of X-rays. The team searched for pairs of bright X-ray sources in colliding dwarf galaxies as evidence of two black holes, and discovered two examples.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Alabama/M. Micic et al.; Optical: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
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This 2002 Chandra image of the Centaurus galaxy cluster shows a long plume-like feature resembling a twisted sheet. The plume is some 70,000 light years in length and has a temperature of about 10 million degrees Celsius. It is several million degrees cooler than the hot gas around it, as seen in this temperature-coded image in which the sequence red, yellow, green, blue indicates increasing gas temperatures. The cluster is about 170 million light years from Earth.
The plume contains a mass comparable to 1 billion suns. It may have formed by gas cooling from the cluster onto the moving target of the central galaxy, as seen by Chandra in the Abell 1795 cluster. Other possibilities are that the plume consists of debris stripped from a galaxy which fell into the cluster, or that it is gas pushed out of the center of the cluster by explosive activity in the central galaxy. A problem with these ideas is that the plume has the same concentration of heavy elements such as oxygen, silicon, and iron as the surrounding hot gas.
Image credit: NASA/IoA/J.Sanders & A.Fabian
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On July 23, 1999, the Space Shuttle Columbia blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center carrying the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In the two decades that have passed, Chandra’s powerful and unique X-ray eyes have contributed to a revolution in our understanding of the cosmos.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is commemorating its 20th anniversary with an assembly of new images. These images represent the breadth of Chandra’s exploration, demonstrating the variety of objects it studies as well as how X-rays complement the data collected in other types of light.
The nearby galaxy Messier 33 contains a star-forming region called NGC 604 where some 200 hot, young, massive stars reside. The cool dust and warmer gas in this stellar nursery appear as the wispy structures in an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope. In between these filaments are giant voids that are filled with hot, X-ray-emitting gas. Astronomers think these bubbles are being blown off the surfaces of the young and massive stars throughout NGC 604.
NGC 604 also likely contains an extreme member of the class of colliding-wind binaries, as reported in a recent paper. It is the first candidate source in this class to be discovered in M33 and the most distant example known, and shares several properties with the famous, volatile system called Eta Carinae, located in our galaxy.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/R. Tuellmann et al.; Optical: NASA/AURA/STScI/J. Schmidt
Another supernova remnant resulting from the explosion of a white dwarf star is revealed in this image of DEM L238, also known as SNR J0534.2-7033. The Chandra X-ray Observatory image (yellow, green and bright red) shows multimillion-degree gas and the Hubble Space Telescope image shows cooler gas in the system, near the outer border of the remnant in red.
This image is part of a collection of archiveed images made by “astronomy artist” Judy Schmidt, to help recognize #ArchivesMonth. All of the objects in this new archive collection are located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, which is a small satellite galaxy to Milky Way.
This year, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory celebrates its 20th year in space exploring the extreme universe.
Image credit: Enhanced Image by Judy Schmidt (CC BY-NC-SA) based on images provided courtesy of NASA/CXC/SAO & NASA/STScI
More about Chandra's 20th Anniversary
This view of the Bullet Cluster, located about 3.8 billion light years from Earth, combines an image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Magellan telescope in Chile. This cluster, officially known as 1E 0657-56, was formed after the violent collision of two large clusters of galaxies. It has become an extremely popular object for astrophysical research, including studies of the properties of dark matter and the dynamics of million-degree gas.
In the latest research, the Bullet Cluster has been used to search for the presence of antimatter leftover from the very early Universe. Antimatter is made up of elementary particles that have the same masses as their corresponding matter counterparts -- protons, neutrons and electrons -- but the opposite charges and magnetic properties.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al. Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.