Tag Archive for 'X-rays'

Our Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by an enormous halo of plasma (seen in blue in this artists’ rendition). Image credit: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss / Ohio State / A. Gupta et al.

Milky Way’s Halo is Disk-Like and Clumpy, Study Shows

Oct 20, 2020 by News Staff

Using X-ray data from NASA’s HaloSat minisatellite, astronomers have found that our Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that...

This X-ray image, taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, shows GW170817. The central panel shows the stacked image of the field, with total exposure of 783 ks. The position of GW170817 is marked. In addition, several X-ray point sources as well as extended diffuse X-ray emissions are visible. The image stamps are centered on the location of GW170817, showing the main phases of its evolution. Image credit: Troja et al., doi: 10.1093/mnras/staa2626.

Astronomers Detect Prolonged X-Ray Emission from Neutron-Star Merger

Oct 14, 2020 by News Staff

In 2017, astronomers detected a gravitational-wave signal, designated GW170817, from the merger of two neutron stars. And since the detection, they have...

This Chandra/ACIS-S image shows XRSs (colored points) in Messier 51; M51-ULS-1 is the orange source in the center of the blue box; diffuse emission is from hot gas. Image credit: Di Stefano et al., arXiv: 2009.08987.

Chandra Spots Possible Extragalactic Planet in Messier 51

Oct 2, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected an extragalactic candidate planet circling a binary system in Messier 51 (also known...

An artist’s impression of a stellar-mass black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and plasma gravitationally pulled from a close binary star companion. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss.

Astrophysicists Suggest New Way to Detect Stellar-Mass Black Holes

Sep 22, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

An analysis of archival X-ray data from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer has revealed a clear separation between the characteristics of stellar-mass...

Carbide Planets May Be Made Of Silica and Diamonds

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

Extrasolar planets hosted by stars with sufficiently high carbon-to-oxygen ratios could be made of diamonds and silica, according to new research by Arizona...

This multi-frequency composite VLBA image shows young radio jets originating near a supermassive black hole at the core of the active galaxy TXS 0128+554; the jets in this image started about 80 years ago, stopped, then resumed about 10 years ago. Image credit: Lister et al / Sophia Dagnello, NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Astronomers Observe Young, Radio-Emitting Jets in Distant Active Galaxy

Aug 27, 2020 by News Staff

Around five years ago, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected high-energy gamma rays coming from TXS 0128+554, an elliptical galaxy located...

Chandra Spots High-Velocity Knots of Stellar Debris in Kepler’s Supernova Remnant

Aug 20, 2020 by News Staff

New images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory show small knots of metal-rich debris in the remnant of Kepler’s supernova, also known as SN 1604,...

These pre-explosion (left panel and right top panel) and post-explosion (right bottom panel) images from Hubble show SN 2019ehk and its host galaxy Messier 100. The location of SN 2019ehk is marked by red lines and the alignment uncertainty is indicated by pink ellipses. Image credit: Jacobson-Galán et al, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab9e66.

Astronomers Catch X-Rays from Calcium-Rich Supernova

Aug 5, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have for the first time used X-ray imaging to examine a calcium-rich supernova. Their findings, published in the Astrophysical Journal, show...

An artist’s impression of the magnetar SGR 1935+2154. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Detect Short Bursts of Radio Waves from Distant Magnetar

Jul 30, 2020 by News Staff

Using ESA’s International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral), NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and several radio telescopes, astronomers...

This two-panel illustration shows a black hole surrounded by a disk of gas, before and after the disk is partially dispersed. In the left panel, the ball of white light above the black hole is the black hole corona, a collection of ultra-hot gas particles that forms as gas from the disk falls into the black hole. The streak of debris falling toward the disk is what remains of a star that was torn apart by the black hole’s gravity. The right panel shows the black hole after the debris from the star has dispersed some of the gas in the disk, causing the corona to disappear. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Colliding Star Destroys Supermassive Black Hole’s Corona in Distant Galaxy

Jul 17, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has watched as an X-ray corona of a supermassive black hole in the active galactic nucleus 1ES 1927+654 was abruptly...

An artist’s impression of the flaring red dwarf AD Leonis, also known as Gliese 388 and BD+20 2465. Image credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Astronomers Observe Superflare on Nearby Red Dwarf AD Leonis

Jul 9, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of astronomers in Japan has detected 12 stellar flares, including a so-called superflare, on AD Leonis, an M-dwarf star located just 16 light-years...

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.

eROSITA X-Ray Telescope Captures Hot, Energetic Universe

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

A new all-sky image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) space observatory contains over one million objects, about...

An artist’s impression of a magnetar. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Discover Youngest Magnetar Ever

Jun 18, 2020 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and ground-based...

An artist’s impression of an ultraluminous X-ray pulsar. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers Find Ultraluminous X-Ray Pulsar in Magellanic Bridge

Jun 8, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using ISRO’s AstroSat space observatory have detected a very rare ultraluminous X-ray source in the Magellanic Bridge, a 43,000-light-year-long...

Milky Way’s Halo Hotter than Previously Thought

Jun 2, 2020 by News Staff

Using deep X-ray observations from ESA’s XMM-Newton Observatory, astronomers have discovered that Milky Way’s halo — a large cloud of ionized...

Chandra Catches Relativistic Jets from Stellar-Mass Black Hole

Jun 2, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have observed a pair of relativistic jets blasting away from a black hole in the binary system MAXI...

An artist’s conception illustrates the phenomena that make up the new class of cosmic explosions called fast blue optical transients. Image credit: Bill Saxton / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

New Class of Cosmic Explosions Discovered: Fast Blue Optical Transients

May 28, 2020 by News Staff

Fast blue optical transients (FBOTs) share some characteristics with supernova explosions of massive stars and with explosions that generate gamma-ray...

Abell 2384 contains the giant structures that can result when two galaxy clusters collide. A superheated gas bridge is seen in this composite image with X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton (blue), radio emission from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (red) and optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey (yellow). This 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 solar masses. Image credit: NASA / CXC / SAO / V. Parekh et al / ESA / XMM-Newton / NCRA / GMRT.

Astronomers Spot Enormous Bridge of Hot Gas between Two Galaxy Clusters

May 11, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatories have observed a 3-million-light-year-long bridge of hot gas linking two unequal...

Chandra and XMM-Newton data indicate that a white dwarf survived a close call with the central black hole in GSN 069. Image credit: NASA / CXO / CSIC-INTA / G. Miniutti et al / CXC / M. Weiss.

Near-Miss Tidal Disruption: White Dwarf Survives Close Encounter with Supermassive Black Hole

Apr 28, 2020 by News Staff

Professor Andrew King from the University of Leicester has shown that periodic X-ray eruptions from a galaxy called GSN 069 could result from the core...

The clutch of Massospondylus carinatus eggs. Image credit: Brett Eloff.

Scientists Use X-rays to Peer inside Fossilized Dinosaur Eggs

Apr 10, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Powerful X-ray beams at the European Synchrotron in France allowed an international team of researchers to study some of the world’s oldest and well-preserved...

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