X-ray
Moonlight Is a Many-Splendored Thing
"By the Light of the Silvery Moon" goes the song. But the color and appearance of the Moon depends upon the particular set…
NASA’s NuSTAR Scans the Sun with X-ray Vision
What if you had x-ray vision like Superman? Or if those funny-looking glasses they advertised in comic books in the 60s…
The Physics Behind “Interstellar’s” Visual Effects Was So Good, it Led to a Scientific Discovery
While he was working on the film Interstellar, executive producer Kip Thorne was tasked with creating the black hole that…
Stars Boil Before They Blow Up, Says NuSTAR
Supernovas are some of the most energetic and powerful events in the observable Universe. Briefly outshining entire galaxies, they are…
Our Galaxy’s Supermassive Black Hole is a Sloppy Eater
Like most galaxies, our Milky Way has a dark monster in its middle: an enormous black hole with the mass…
X-ray Burst May Be the First Sign of a Supernova
GRB 080913, a distant supernova detected by Swift. This image merges the view through Swift's UltraViolet and Optical Telescope, which…
Rare X-Ray Nova Reveals a New Black Hole in the Milky Way
Swift J1745-26, with a scale of the moon as it would appear in the field of view from Earth. This…
Blowing a Super-duper Celestial Bubble
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Mich./S.Oey, IR: NASA/JPL, Optical: ESO/WFI/2.2-m. Zoom by John Williams/TerraZoom using Zoomify When NASA combines images from different…
Astronomers Discover Milky Way’s Hot Halo
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…
A Star’s Dying Scream May Be a Beacon for Physics
When a star suffered an untimely demise at the hands of a hidden black hole, astronomers detected its doleful, ululating…