Chandra

NASA’s Great Observatories Provide a Sparkly New View of the Small Magellanic Cloud

April 3, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter This is just pretty! NASA’s Great Observatories — the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Spitzer Infrared Telescope — have combined forces to create this new image of the Small Magellanic Cloud. The SMC is one of the [...]

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Book Review: Your Ticket to the Universe

March 26, 2013

Every once in a while an astronomy book comes out that combines stunning high-definition images from the world’s most advanced telescopes, comprehensive descriptions of cosmic objects that are both approachable and easy to understand (but not overly simplistic) and a gorgeous layout that makes every page spread visually exciting and enjoyable. This is one of [...]

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Astronomers Find Ultimate Oxymoron: A Small Supermassive Black Hole

October 24, 2012

There’s jumbo shrimp and accurate rumors; now there’s even a mini supermassive black hole. Astronomers have identified the smallest supermassive black hole ever observed, and while it’s considered a shrimp as far as supermassive black holes go, this guy is still pretty big: the mass of the black hole in galaxy NGC 4178 is estimated [...]

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Astronomers Discover Milky Way’s Hot Halo

September 24, 2012

Artist’s illustration of a hot gas halo enveloping the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds (NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; NASA/CXC/Ohio State/A.Gupta et al.) Our galaxy — and the nearby Large and Small Magellanic Clouds as well — appears to be surrounded by an enormous halo of hot gas, several hundred times hotter than the surface of the Sun and [...]

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Pulsar Sets New Speed Record

June 30, 2012

A pulsar may have been spotted racing through space at over 6 million miles per hour (9.65 million km/h), setting a new speed record for these curious cosmic objects. If observations are what they appear to be, astronomers will have to recalculate the incredible forces created by supernova explosions. Remove this ad

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