Credit NASA/CXC/SAO
Instrument: ACIS
(23 Out 13)
Every year, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
looks at hundreds of objects throughout space to help expand our
understanding of the Universe. Ultimately, these data are stored in the
Chandra Data Archive,
an electronic repository that provides access to these unique X-ray
findings for anyone who would like to explore them. With the passing of
Chandra's 15th anniversary
in operation on August 26, 1999, the archive continues to grow as each
successive year adds to the enormous and invaluable dataset.
To celebrate Chandra's decade and a half in space, and to honor
October as American Archives Month, a variety of objects have been
selected from Chandra's archive. Each of the new images we have produced
combines
Chandra data
with those from other telescopes. This technique of creating
"multiwavelength" images allows scientists and the public to see how
X-rays fit with data of other types of light, such as optical, radio,
and infrared. As scientists continue to make new discoveries with the
telescope, the burgeoning archive will allow us to see the high-energy
Universe as only Chandra can.
PSR B1509-58 (upper left)
Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon where people see recognizable
shapes in clouds, rock formations, or otherwise unrelated objects or
data. When Chandra's image of PSR B1509-58, a spinning neutron star
surrounded by a cloud of energetic particles, was
released in 2009,
it quickly gained attention because many saw a hand-like structure in
the X-ray emission. In this new image of the system, X-rays from Chandra
in gold are seen along with infrared data from NASA's Wide-field
Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope in red, green, and blue.
Pareidolia may strike again in this image as some people report seeing a
shape of a face in WISE's infrared data.
RCW 38 (upper right)
A young star cluster about 5,500 light years from Earth, RCW 38 provides
astronomers a chance to closely examine many young, rapidly evolving
stars at once. In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra are
blue, while infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are orange
and additional infrared data from the 2MASS survey appears white. There
are many massive stars in RCW 38 that will likely explode as
supernovas.
Astronomers studying RCW 38 are hoping to better understand this
environment as our Sun was likely born into a similar stellar nursery.
Hercules A (middle left):
Some galaxies have extremely bright cores, suggesting that they contain a
supermassive black hole that is pulling in matter at a prodigious rate.
Astronomers call these "
active galaxies,"
and Hercules A is one of them. In visible light (colored red, green and
blue, with most objects appearing white), Hercules A looks like a
typical elliptical galaxy. In X-ray light, however, Chandra detects a
giant cloud of multimillion-degree gas (purple). This gas has been
heated by energy generated by the infall of matter into a black hole at
the center of Hercules A that is over 1,000 times as massive as the one
in the middle of the Milky Way. Radio data (blue) show jets of particles
streaming away from the black hole. The jets span a length of almost
one million
light years.
Kes 73 (middle right):
The supernova remnant Kes 73, located about
28,000 light years away, contains a so-called anomalous X-ray pulsar, or
AXP, at its center. Astronomers think that most AXPs are magnetars,
which are
neutron stars
with ultra-high magnetic fields. Surrounding the point-like AXP in the
middle, Kes 73 has an expanding shell of debris from the supernova
explosion that occurred between about 750 and 2100 years ago, as seen
from Earth. The Chandra data (blue) reveal clumpy structures along one
side of the remnant, and appear to overlap with infrared data (orange).
The X-rays partially fill the shell seen in radio emission (red) by the
Very Large Array. Data from the Digitized Sky Survey optical telescope
(white) show stars in the field-of-view.
Mrk 573 (lower left):
Markarian 573 is an active galaxy that has two cones of emission streaming away from the supermassive
black hole
at its center. Several lines of evidence suggest that a torus, or
doughnut of cool gas and dust may block some of the radiation produced
by matter falling into supermassive black holes, depending on how the
torus is oriented toward Earth. Chandra data of Markarian 573 suggest
that its torus may not be completely solid, but rather may be clumpy.
This composite image shows overlap between X-rays from Chandra (blue),
radio emission from the VLA (purple), and optical data from Hubble
(gold).
NGC 4736 (lower right):
NGC 4736 (also known as Messier 94) is a spiral galaxy that is unusual
because it has two ring structures. This galaxy is classified as
containing a "low ionization nuclear emission region," or LINER, in its
center, which produces radiation from specific elements such as
oxygen and nitrogen.
Chandra observations (gold) of NGC 4736, seen in this composite image
with infrared data from Spitzer (red) and optical data from Hubble and
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (blue), suggest that the X-ray emission
comes from a recent burst of star formation. Part of the evidence comes
from the large number of point sources near the center of the galaxy,
showing that strong star formation has occurred. In other galaxies,
evidence points to supermassive black holes being responsible for LINER
properties. Chandra's result on NGC 4736 shows LINERs may represent more
than one physical phenomenon.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages
the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington, DC. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
young, hot stars and extended hot gas as imaged by Chandra, embedded in a molecular cloud (green) imaged in infrared by the ISAAC camera, and a ring of radio emission (blue) detected by ATCA from a region of gas heated by the radiation from the hot stars in the cluster. Image credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk et al./ISAAC/VLT/ATCA - Download Image
