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.All Chandra images are released to public and can be found at their homepage. Also the Smithsonian photography blog has a great article on why we need X-Rays to see the universe.
Here we collect what we think are the most astonishing and almost all the time mind blowing images captured and processed by Chandra, in no particular order.
Sombrero Galaxy: A Great Observatories View
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.
W3 Main: A Productive Star Formation Factory
his image shows one of the many star-forming complexes of W3. The bright, point-like X-ray sources represent an extensive population of several hundred young stars, many of which were not found in earlier studies. Because its X-ray sources are all at the same distance, yet span a range of masses, ages, and other properties, W3 is an ideal laboratory for understanding recent and ongoing star formation in one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms.
Westerlund 2: A Stellar Sight
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows Westerlund 2, a young star cluster with an estimated age of about one or two million years that contains some of the hottest, brightest, and most massive stars known. In this image, low-energy X-rays are colored red, intermediate-energy X-rays in green, and high-energy X-rays in blue. The image shows a very high density of massive stars that are bright in X-rays, plus diffuse X-ray emission. An incredibly massive double star system called WR20a is visible as the bright yellow point just below and to the right of the cluster’s center.
SN 1006 (A supernova remnant about 7,000 light years from Earth)
Chandra’s image of SN 1006 shows X-rays from multimillion degree gas (red/green) and high-energy electrons (blue). In the year 1006 a “new star” appeared in the sky and in just a few days it became brighter than the planet Venus. We now know that the event heralded not the appearance of a new star, but the cataclysmic death of an old one.
Perseus Cluster (Perhaps the most important)
An accumulation of 270 hours of Chandra observations reveals evidence of the turmoil that has wracked the central region of the cluster for hundreds of millions of years. The cluster contains thousands of galaxies immersed in a vast cloud of multimillion degree gas with the mass equivalent of trillions of suns. The enormous bright loops, ripples, and jet-like streaks apparent in the image can be linked to explosive activity generated by gas swirling toward the supermassive black hole (white spot) in the giant central galaxy, NGC 1275.
M82: Starburst Galaxy
Images from three of NASA’s Great Observatories were combined to create this spectacular, multiwavelength view of the starburst galaxy M82. Optical light from stars (yellow-green/Hubble Space Telescope) shows the disk of a modest-sized, apparently normal galaxy. Another Hubble observation designed to image 10,000 degree Celsius hydrogen gas (orange) reveals a startlingly different picture of matter blasting out of the galaxy. The Spitzer Space Telescope infrared image (red) shows that cool gas and dust are also being ejected. Chandra’s X-ray image (blue) reveals gas heated to millions of degrees by the violent outflow, which can be traced back to vigorous star formation in the central regions of the galaxy. The burst of star formation is thought to have been initiated by a close encounter with a large nearby galaxy, M81, about 100 million years ago.
Planetary Nebulas – Fast Winds from Dying Stars
Planetary nebulas – so called because some of them resemble a planet when viewed through a small telescope – are produced in the late stages of a sun-like star’s life. This image shows Chandra’s view of Menzel 3 (Mz3, also known as the Ant Nebula), a planetary nebula about 3,000 light years from Earth. Dynamic elongated clouds envelop bubbles of multimillion degree gas produced by high-velocity winds from dying stars.
Eta Carinae: New View of Doomed Star
A star between 100 and 150 more massive than the Sun, about 7,500 light years from Earth. This composite image of Eta Carinae from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope shows the remnants of a massive eruption from the star during the 1840s. The X-ray data (yellow) show where material from that explosion has collided with nearby gas and dust. The optical data (blue) reveals material ejected from the star has formed a bipolar structure.
The Eagle Nebula (M16)
One of all time favorite astronomy images.
A composite image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope penetrates the dark columns of gas and dust to reveal how much star formation is happening there.
Cartwheel Galaxy: Astronomers Do Flips Over Cartwheel Galaxy
This image combines data from four different wavelengths of light: infrared (red), visible (green), ultraviolet (blue), and X-ray(purple). The unusual shape of the Cartwheel Galaxy is likely due to a collision with one of the smaller galaxies on the lower left several hundred million years ago. The smaller galaxy produced compression waves in the gas of the Cartwheel as it plunged through it. These compression waves trigger bursts of star formation. The most recent star burst has lit up the Cartwheel’s rim, which has a diameter larger than that of the Milky Way Galaxy, with millions of bright young stars. The bright, white X-ray sources on the rim (see inset) are due to matter falling into black holes left behind by the explosion of massive stars.
NGC 6543 (The Cat’s Eye)
A composite image of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and Hubble Space Telescope (red and purple) of NGC 6543 shows a phase that Sun-like stars undergo at the end of their lives. Material from the outer layers of the star in the Cat’s Eye is flying away at about 4 million miles per hour. A hot core is left behind that eventually collapses to become a white dwarf star. The Chandra data reveal that the central star in NGC 6543 is surrounded by a cloud of multi-million-degree gas.
Ops I think I did 11 there. Thanks to the awesome work of the Smithsonian Institution for their collaboration with flickr commons which enabled us to gather the high-res versions of many of these images. Here is their entire Chandra set (till now 90 images)