Tag Archive for 'X-rays'

This composite image features a spectacular set of eight separate concentric rings around a black hole in the V404 Cygni binary system, captured using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The image also contains optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii that show the stars in the field of view. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Wisconsin-Madison / Heinz et al. / Pan-STARRS.

Astronomers Spot Giant X-Ray Rings around Stellar-Mass Black Hole

Aug 9, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have detected a set of eight X-ray rings around a low-mass black...

Wilkins et al. observed bright flares of X-ray emissions, produced as gas falls into a supermassive black hole in I Zwicky 1; the flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, short flashes of X-rays were seen -- corresponding to the reflection of the flares from the far side of the disk, bent around the black hole by its strong gravitational field. Image credit: Dan Wilkins.

Astronomers Detect Light Echoes Coming from Behind Supermassive Black Hole

Jul 30, 2021 by News Staff

Using ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescopes, astronomers have observed X-ray flares emitted from around the supermassive black hole in...

Jupiter’s X-ray aurorae. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Zhonghua Yao / William Dunn.

Planetary Scientists Solve Mystery of Jupiter’s X-Ray Auroral Flares

Jul 12, 2021 by News Staff

The rapidly rotating, strong magnetic field of Jupiter provides a natural lab that is key to understanding the dynamics of high-energy plasmas. Spectacular...

PAH molecules overlaid on the Taurus Molecular Cloud, a large blue-white cloud made of gas and dust with large and small stars of varying luminosities interspersed throughout. Aromatic molecule structures shown in order from left to right: 1-cyanonaphthalene, 1-cyano-cyclopentadiene, HC11N, 2-cyanonaphthalene, vinylcyanoacetylene, 2-cyano-cyclopentadiene, benzonitrile, E-cyanovinylacetylene, HC4NC, propargylcyanide. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Meteoritic Polymers of Glycine Shed Light on Pre-Solar Space Chemistry

Jun 30, 2021 by News Staff

Asteroid material in chondritic Vigarano class alteration type 3 (CV3) meteorites provide a good record of complex chemistry present when or before our...

This image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the supernova remnant MSH 15-52. Image credit: NASA / SAO / NCSU / Borkowski et al.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Watches Fast Blast Wave from Exploded Star

Jun 25, 2021 by News Staff

A stellar structure known as the ‘Hand of God’ is a nebula of energy and particles blown by a pulsar left behind after a star exploded in our Milky...

Astronomers Detect High-Energy Gamma Rays from Afterglow of Long Gamma-Ray Burst

Jun 4, 2021 by News Staff

Long gamma-ray bursts are bright flashes of extragalactic gamma rays produced during the collapse of a massive star. A gamma-ray burst itself lasts only...

This panorama shows the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy. It builds on previous surveys from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, and expands Chandra’s high-energy view farther above and below the plane of the Galaxy than previous imaging campaigns. X-rays from Chandra are orange, green, and purple, showing different X-ray energies, and the radio data from MeerKAT are gray. Image credit: NASA / CXC / UMass / Q.D. Wang / NRF / SARAO / MeerKAT.

New Map Reveals X-Ray-Emitting Threads and Plume-Like Structures near Milky Way’s Center

May 28, 2021 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, an astronomer from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has...

This composite image, taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A; the different colors represent elements detected by Chandra: iron (orange), oxygen (purple), and the amount of silicon compared to magnesium (green); titanium (light blue) detected previously by NASA’s NuSTAR telescope is shown, but not the different type of titanium found by Chandra. Image credit: NASA / CXC / RIKEN / Sato et al. / NuSTAR.

Chandra Detects Stable Isotope of Titanium in Cassiopeia A

Apr 28, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected stable titanium, along with chromium and iron, blasting out from the center of the supernova...

This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by Hubble of the Crab Nebula, a 6-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Hester / A. Loll, Arizona State University.

Study: Crab Pulsar’s X-rays Brighter during ‘Giant Radio Pulses’

Apr 9, 2021 by News Staff

Located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, the Crab Nebula and its pulsar formed in a supernova whose light reached Earth in July 1054;...

This Hubble image shows the galaxy cluster CHIPS1911+4455. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team.

Astronomers Discover Three New Galaxy Clusters

Apr 6, 2021 by News Staff

As part of the Clusters Hiding in Plain Sight (CHiPS) survey, astronomers have discovered three new galaxy cluster candidates and confirmed two of them:...

This composite image shows a Chandra X-ray image of Uranus from 2002 (pink) superimposed on an optical image from the Keck-I Telescope obtained in 2004. Image credit: NASA / CXO / University College London / Dunn et al.

Chandra Detects X-Ray Emission from Uranus

Apr 1, 2021 by News Staff

Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, and its ring system appear to mainly produce X-ray emission by scattering solar X-rays, but some may also come...

An artist’s illustration of a close-up view of a quasar and its jet, like the one in PJ352-52. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss.

Chandra Spots Extremely Long Cosmic Jet in Early Universe

Mar 10, 2021 by News Staff

The source of the 160,000-light-year-long jet of particles is PSO J352.4034-15.3373 (PJ352-15 for short), a rapidly growing supermassive black hole, or...

This image from the SRG/eROSITA all-sky survey shows SNR Hoinga (marked); the large bright source in the lower quadrant of the image is from SNR Vela; the image colors are correlated with the energies of the detected X-ray photons; red represents the 0.3-0.6 keV energy range, green 0.6-1.0 keV and blue 1.0-2.3 keV. Image credit: SRG / eROSITA / Becker et al., doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202040156.

eROSITA X-Ray Telescope Spots Enormous Supernova Remnant

Mar 5, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from the eROSITA X-ray telescope aboard the Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory have detected the largest supernova remnant...

Computer-generated virtual unfolding of the sealed letter DB-1538 from the Brienne Collection. Image credit: Dambrogio et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21326-w.

Scientists Digitally Unfold 300-Year-Old Sealed Letters

Mar 3, 2021 by News Staff

Using a highly sensitive X-ray microtomography scanner, a team of researchers has scanned four unopened letters from the Brienne Collection, a 17th-century...

SN 1987A: the panel on the left contains a 3D computer simulation, based on Chandra data, of the supernova debris from SN 1987A crashing into a surrounding ring of material; the artist’s illustration (right panel) depicts a so-called pulsar wind nebula, a web of particles and energy blown away from a pulsar, which is a rotating, highly magnetized neutron star. Image credit: NASA / Chandra / CXC / University di Palermo / E. Greco / INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo / Salvatore Orlando.

Astronomers Finally Find Neutron Star in Famous Supernova Remnant

Feb 26, 2021 by News Staff

Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) was first observed on February 23, 1987 in a nearby dwarf galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, some 164,000 light-years away....

This composite image contains data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and the NSF’s Very Large Array (red) of Sgr A East. This object is located very close to the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way’s center, and likely overruns the disk of material surrounding the black hole. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Nanjing University / Zhou et al. / NSF / NRAO / VLA.

Chandra Finds Rare Supernova Remnant in Milky Way’s Center

Feb 9, 2021 by News Staff

Sagittarius A East (Sgr A East), a supernova remnant located strikingly close to the central supermassive black hole of our Milky Way Galaxy, resulted...

An artist’s impression of a neutron star. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astrophysicists May Have Found Evidence of Long-Sought Axions

Jan 19, 2021 by News Staff

First theorized in the 1970s, axions are hypothetical particles that were proposed to preserve a time-reversal symmetry of the nuclear force. These particles...

This composite image of Swift J1818.0-1607 contains a wide field of view in the infrared from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, taken before the magnetar’s discovery. X-rays from Chandra show the magnetar in purple. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of West Virginia / H. Blumer / JPL / Caltech / Spitzer.

Chandra Observes Young, Fast Spinning Magnetar and Its Environment

Jan 12, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have studied Swift J1818.0-1607, a new magnetar (a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful...

Astronomers Discover New Supercluster of Galaxies

Jan 5, 2021 by Sergio Prostak

Using data from the eROSITA X-ray telescope aboard the Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory, astronomers have detected a previously unknown supercluster...

This image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope shows the energetic Universe. As eROSITA scans the sky, the energy of the collected photons is measured with an accuracy ranging from 2% - 6%. To generate this image, in which the whole sky is projected onto an ellipse (so-called Aitoff projection) with the center of the Milky Way in the middle and the body of our Galaxy running horizontally, photons have been color-coded according to their energy (red for energies 0.3-0.6 keV, green for 0.6-1 keV, blue for 1-2.3 keV). The red diffuse glow away from the galactic plane is the emission of the hot gas in the vicinity of the Solar System (the Local Bubble). Along the plane itself, dust and gas absorb the lowest energy X-ray photons, so that only high-energy emitting sources can be seen, and their color appears blue in the image. The hotter gas close to the Galactic center, shown in green and yellow, carries imprinted the history of the most energetic processes in the life of the Milky Way, such as supernova explosions, driving fountains of gas out of the plane, and, possibly, past outburst from the now dormant supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Piercing through this turbulent, hot diffuse medium, are hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources, which appear mostly white in the image, and uniformly distributed over the sky. Among them, distant active galactic nuclei are visible as point sources, while clusters of galaxies reveal themselves as extended X-ray nebulosities. In total, about one million X-ray sources have been detected in this image. Image credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner & the eSASS team / Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics / Eugene Churazov & Marat Gilfanov, IKI.

Astronomers Detect Large-Scale X-Ray Bubbles in Milky Way’s Halo

Dec 31, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory have detected X-ray-emitting bubbles that extend approximately...

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