Chandra | Universe Today

The light echo of an X-ray flare from the nucleus of a galaxy has been observed. The flare almost certainly originates from a single star being gravitationally ripped apart by a supermassive black hole in the galactic core. As the star was being pulled into the black hole, its material was injected into the black hole accretion disk, causing a sudden burst of radiation. The resulting X-ray flare emission was observed as it hit local stellar gases, producing the light echo. This event gives us a better insight to how stars are eaten by supermassive black holes and provides a method to map the structure of galactic nuclei. Scientists now believe they have observational evidence for the elusive molecular torus that is thought to surround active supermassive black holes.
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Its observations like these that really give us an idea about how big the cosmos actually is. A star in a small galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), some 160,000 light years from Earth, exploded as a massive supernova 400 years ago (Earth years that is). Combining the observations from an X-ray observatory and an optical telescope, scientists are currently observing the reflected light off galactic dust, only just reaching the Earth hundreds of years after the explosion…
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Pulsars are fast-spinning, highly radiating neutron stars. Most pulsars emit radio, X-ray and gamma radiation at regular intervals (usually periods of a few milliseconds to a few seconds), in fact many pulses keep the accuracy of the most accurate atomic clocks on Earth. However, occasionally, these rapidly rotating bodies undergo a violent change, blasting massive quantities of energy into space. Although short-lived (a fraction of a second), the observed explosion packs a punch of at least 75,000 Suns. Is this a natural process in the life of a pulsar? Is it a totally different type of cosmic phenomena? Researchers suggest these observations may be a different type of neutron star: magnetars disguised as pulsars (and without an ounce of dark matter in sight!)…
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The problem with supernovae is that you never know where they're going to happen. Your only clue is the bright flash in the sky, and then it's too late. But a team of European researchers think they were lucky enough to have spotted the precursor to supernova.
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Ouch, that's going to leave a mark. A new photograph captured by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows a powerful jet blasting out of one galaxy, and colliding with another. As the jet tears through the galaxy, it could have serious implications for planetary formation, and trigger a wave of new star formation.
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Like a baseball struck by a bat, there's a neutron star out there that's going, going, gone. Discovered using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the neutron star appears to be the result of a lopsided supernova explosion. It's now hurtling away from the Milky Way faster than 4.8 million km/h (3 million mph). And it's never coming back.
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Here's a short little post about the star forming nebula NGC 281, captured by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. This photograph is actually a composite of several wavelengths, imaged by ground and space-based observatories.

The optical data (red, orange and yellow) shows the clouds of gas and dust, and the dark lanes of obscuring dust where stars may be forming. The Chandra X-Ray data is in purple, and reveals more than 300 individual X-ray sources - most of them are associated with the central star forming region.

There's another group of X-ray sources on the other side of the molecular cloud. Based on the elements in the region, astronomers think that a supernova went off in the region recently.

But really, it's a pretty picture.

Original Source: Chandra News Release

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This absolutely beautiful object has a big of a bizarre name: G292.0+1.8. But don't let that astronomical jargon throw you, you're looking at a supernova remnant, captured by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and ground-based observatories. It's considered a textbook example of what remains after a massive star blows itself apart as a supernova. But it's got a few surprises too.
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It's not a huge story, just some cool science and a pretty picture. Here's a newly released image of the Orion Nebula, captured by two of the great observatories: the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright blue and orange points are young stars, blazing out the X-rays visible to Chandra, while the diffuse glow is the surrounding gas and dust revealed by Hubble.
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At a distance of only 200,000 light years, the Small Magellanic Cloud is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbours. Thanks to its brutal treatment by our galaxy's gravity, the galaxy has massive regions of active star formation, and regular supernova explosions. Astronomers studied the region with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and saw superbubbles formed by stars and supernovae working together.
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Here are two images of supernova remnants, made with combined data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton. For both of these images, XMM-Newton captured the wider field view, while Chandra focused in on key regions of interest to researchers.
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The newest image released from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory is helping astronomers build up a census of the number of actively feeding supermassive black holes across the Universe. Scientists are hoping to build up a comprehensive picture of where (and thus when), these black holes were blasting out radiation.

It's now thought that almost every galaxy in the Universe seems to contain a supermassive black hole at its centre. Perhaps the black holes came first and the rest of the galaxy formed around it, or maybe things evolved the other way around. Whatever the case, most of these black holes are in a quiescent state; apart from their gravitational influence on nearby stars, they're all but invisible.
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When a star with at least 8 times the mass of our Sun detonates as a supernova, it leaves behind a neutron star. This tiny object has the mass of a star, but it's compressed down to a ball only 10 km (6 miles) across - its protons and electrons have been compressed together to form neutrons. One of these objects has puzzled astronomers for years, but now researchers think they've found the solution: it's got a friend.
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One time, astronomers thought that only black holes had jets of material pouring out of them. Something to do with the event horizon, and a lack of a solid surface. Well, step aside black holes, neutron stars seem to have them too.
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The death watch is on for Eta Carinae, a relatively nearby massive star that's set to explode as a supernova. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory delivered this beautiful photograph of the star and its surrounding nebula; layers of material that it's already shed in its death throes.
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Here's a cool photograph of supernova remnant N132D. It's actually a composite image, made up of pictures gathered by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The remnant is located approximately 163,000 light-years away in the neighbouring galaxy: the Large Magellanic Cloud.
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A new photograph taken by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory reveals one of the most energetic events ever seen in the Universe. According to astronomers, two huge galaxy clusters are currently undergoing a collision at a speed of 6.5 million km/h (4 million mph), releasing a tremendous amount of energy as their clouds of hot gas slam together. Or maybe it's a supermassive black hole consuming an incomprehensible amount of material.
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NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory took this image of the Andromeda Galaxy (aka M31), the closest major galaxy to the Milky Way. The wider-field image is in optical, and then the zoomed in region is a composite X-ray and optical light image. The purpose of the research was to find X-ray regions and point sources in M31's central core.
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NASA's Chandra X-Ray observatory might have observed a brand new kind of supernova, or maybe it's just an unusually bright supernova. Whatever the case, the explosion of SN 2006gy seems to be the brightest supernova ever observed, flaring with 100 times the energy of a typical exploded star.
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When we look into the skies with our eyes, we see in the visible spectrum. Although objects can look beautiful, it's only a fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. To really see and understand the Universe, you'll want to look in different regions of the spectrum. The three great observatories: Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra, have teamed up to spotlight the Sombrero Galaxy (aka M104) in three different wavelengths.
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While NASA's New Horizon spacecraft was making its gravity assisted flyby past Jupiter, some friends back at home were watching to help give the science some perspective. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory gathered images of Jupiter for several days before the flyby, and the combined photographs were released today.
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Probably the most famous photograph every taken by the Hubble Space Telescope is of the "Pillars of Creation"; a star forming region inside the Eagle Nebula (aka M16). Astronomers have wanted to know just how much star formation is actually going on inside the nebula.
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A new set of images from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory show the reflected X-ray emission from a small meal consumed by the supermassive black hole that lurks at the heart of the Milky Way.
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NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has created this amazing image of one of the youngest supernova remnants in the galaxy. The supernova that created it blazed in the sky more than 400 years ago, before the telescope had even been invented. No problem, though, it was bright enough that you didn't need a telescope - it reached the brightness of Jupiter at its peak. And one of the greatest astronomers in history, Johannes Kepler was there to see it.
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You're looking at a star forming region known as W3. It's located about 6,000 light-years from Earth in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way. It's just a small part of a much larger molecular cloud complex called the W4 superbubble (not pictured here), which extends about 100 light-years across. As that superbubble expands, it's giving these clouds of dust and gas just the bump they need to collapse and get down to the business of furious star formation.
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