X-Ray Astronomy

Hungry Black Hole was Already Feasting 800 Million Years After the Big Bang

Black holes swallow everything—including light—which explains why we can't see them. But we can observe their immediate surroundings and learn…

2 months ago

A Star Came too Close to a Black Hole. It Didn’t End Well

Black holes are confounding objects that stretch physics to its limits. The most massive ones lurk in the centers of…

3 months ago

How Dangerous are Nearby Supernovae to Life on Earth?

Life and supernovae don't mix. From a distance, supernovae explosions are fascinating. A star more massive than our Sun runs…

5 months ago

Most Black Holes Spin Rapidly. This one… Doesn’t

A Chandra X-ray Observatory view of the supermassive black hole at the heart of quasar H1821+643. Courtesy NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/J.…

9 months ago

Astronomers Finally Catch a Nova Detonating on a White Dwarf as it's Happening

On July 7, 2020, the X-ray instrument eROSITA captured an astronomical event that – until then – had only been…

11 months ago

A Pulsar is Blasting out Jets of Matter and Antimatter

Why is there so much antimatter in the Universe? Ordinary matter is far more plentiful than antimatter, but scientists keep…

1 year ago

The First Image From NASA’s new X-ray Observatory

It’s first light for one of the newest space observatories! The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer team has released their first…

1 year ago

NASA Launches a New X-ray Observatory

A new mission has launched to study some the most intriguing secrets of the universe. No, not THAT spacecraft (JWST…

1 year ago

A Black Hole Emitted a Flare Away From us, but its Intense Gravity Redirected the Blast Back in our Direction

Using the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR X-ray telescopes, an international team of scientists were able to see light coming from behind…

2 years ago

New Mosaic Shows the Galactic Core From Opposite Sides of the Electromagnetic Spectrum

NASA recently released a panoramic mosaic image that beautifully captures the mysterious and extremely energetic environment at the heart of…

2 years ago