Normally found only in heavy metal bands or certain post-apocalyptic films, a 鈥渇lame-throwing guitar鈥� has now been spotted moving through space. Astronomers have captured movies of this extreme cosmic object using NASA鈥檚 Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.
Most stars form in collections, called clusters or associations, that include very massive stars. These giant stars send out large amounts of high-energy radiation, which can disrupt relatively fragile disks of dust and gas that are in the process of coalescing to form new planets. A team of astronomers used NASA鈥檚 Chandra X-ray Observatory, in combination with ultraviolet, optical, and infrared data, to show where some of the most treacherous places in a star cluster may be, where planets鈥� chances to form are diminished.
A massive black hole has torn apart one star and is now using that stellar wreckage to pummel another star or smaller black hole that used to be in the clear.聽
Text, images, and video: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2024/sonify9/ A quarter of a century ago, NASA released the 鈥渇irst light鈥� images from the agency鈥檚 Chandra X-ray Observatory. This introduction to the world of Chandra鈥檚 high-resolution X-ray imaging capabilities included an unprecedented view of Cassiopeia A, the remains of an exploded star located about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Over the years, Chandra鈥檚 views of Cassiopeia A have become some of the telescope鈥檚 best-known images. To mark the anniversary of this milestone, new sonifications of three images 鈥� including Cassiopeia A (Cas A) 鈥� are being released. Sonification is a process that translates astronomical data into sound, similar to how digital data are more routinely turned into images. This translation process preserves the science of the data from its original digital state but provides an alternative pathway to experiencing the data.
A team of astronomers has discovered enormous arms of hot gas in the Coma cluster of galaxies by using NASA鈥檚 Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA鈥檚 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.
Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have taken a major step in explaining why material around the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is extraordinarily faint in X-rays. This discovery holds important implications for understanding black holes.
Observations with NASA鈥檚 Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a massive cloud of multimillion-degree gas in a galaxy about 60 million light years from Earth. The hot gas cloud is likely caused by a collision between a dwarf galaxy and a much larger galaxy called NGC 1232.
For the first time since exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the sun, were discovered almost 20 years ago, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.
Magnetars 鈥� the dense remains of dead stars that erupt sporadically with bursts of high-energy radiation 鈥� are some of the most extreme objects known in the Universe. A major campaign using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other satellites shows magnetars may be more diverse 鈥� and common 鈥� than previously thought.
The intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to produce immense power in the form of jets moving at millions of miles per hour. A composite image shows this happening in the galaxy known as 4C+29.30 where X-rays from Chandra (blue) have been combined with optical (gold) and radio (pink) data. The X-rays trace the location of superheated gas around the black hole, which is estimated to weight 100 million times the mass of our Sun.
Scientists have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a detailed study of an enormous cloud of hot gas enveloping two large, colliding galaxies. This unusually large reservoir of gas contains as much mass as 10 billion Suns, spans about 300,000 light years, and radiates at a temperature of more than 7 million degrees.
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. Many navigators used this object to make their way across the oceans. A new composite image from three NASA telescopes -- Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer -- shows this galaxy like Ferdinand Magellan, who lends his name to the SMC, could never have imagined.
A new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory points to the origin of a famous supernova. This supernova, discovered in 1604 by Johannes Kepler, belongs to an important class of objects that are used to measure the rate of expansion of the Universe.
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 鈥� protons and neutrons, and their constituent quarks 鈥� interact under the extreme conditions found in neutron stars.
New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest a highly distorted supernova remnant may contain the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. The remnant appears to be the product of a rare explosion in which matter is ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star.
Some of the biggest black holes in the Universe may actually be even bigger than previously thought, according to a study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
In this holiday season of home cooking and carefully-honed recipes, some astronomers are asking: what is the best mix of ingredients for stars to make the largest number of plump black holes? They are tackling this problem by studying the number of black holes in galaxies with different compositions. One of these galaxies is the ring galaxy NGC 922 that was formed by the collision between two galaxies.
A jet of X-rays from a supermassive black hole 12.4 billion light years from Earth has been detected by NASA鈥檚 Chandra X-ray Observatory. This is the most distant X-ray jet ever observed and gives astronomers a glimpse into the explosive activity associated with the growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe.
These images taken with several different telescopes 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.
One of the lowest mass supermassive black holes ever observed in the middle of a galaxy has been identified, thanks to NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other observatories. The host galaxy is of a type not expected to harbor supermassive black holes, suggesting that this black hole, while related to its supermassive cousins, may have a different origin.
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