X-Ray Astronomy

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…

1 year 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.…

2 years 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…

2 years 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…

2 years 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…

2 years 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…

2 years 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…

3 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…

3 years ago

If You Could See in X-rays, This is What the Universe Would Look Like

X-ray astronomy helps scientists study neutron stars, binary star systems, and supernova remnants, and even helps detect black holes. But…

4 years ago

Astronomers Have Recorded the Biggest Explosion Ever Seen in the Universe

Hundreds of millions of light years away, a supermassive black hole sits in the center of a galaxy cluster named…

4 years ago