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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…