Latest Chandra X-ray Observatory Stories

In an unusual observation, a team of scientists has scanned the northern polar region of Earth with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The results show that the aurora borealis, or "northern lights," also dance in X-ray light, creating changing bright arcs of X-ray energy above the Earth's surface. While other satellite observations had previously detected high-energy X-rays from the Earth auroras, the latest Chandra observations reveal low-energy X-rays generated during auroral...

NASA -- Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite have found evidence of a black hole swallowing a neutron star. The discovery is reported in the December 15 issue of Nature. This rare event, seen on July 24, created a gamma-ray burst that lasted only for a few milliseconds. However, observations of the lingering afterglow provided evidence of what could have been the demise of a neutron star orbiting a black hole. The black hole may have first stretched the dense neutron star into a crescent...

NASA -- Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered evidence of energetic plumes - particles that extend 300,000 light years into a massive cluster of galaxies. The plumes are due to explosive venting from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, and they provide dramatic new evidence of the influence a black hole can have over intergalactic distances. "In relative terms, it is as if a heat source the size of a fingernail affects the behavior of a region the size...

NASA -- Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have witnessed a cosmic rite of passage, the transition from a supernova to a supernova remnant, a process that has never seen in much detail until now, leaving it poorly defined.A supernova is a massive star explosion; the remnant is the beautiful glowing shell that evolves afterwards. When does a supernova become supernova remnant? When does the shell appear and what powers its radiant glow?A science team led by Dr. Stefan Immler of...

NASA -- The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way has surprisingly helped spawn a new generation of stars, according to observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This novel mode of star formation may solve several mysteries about the supermassive black holes that reside at the centers of nearly all galaxies."Massive black holes are usually known for violence and destruction," said Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, and...

By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dozens of massive stars, destined for a short but brilliant life, were born less than a light-year away from the Milky Way's central black hole, one of the most hostile environments in our galaxy, astronomers reported on Thursday. On Earth, this might be a bit like setting up a maternity ward on the side of an active volcano. But researchers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory and other instruments believe there is a safe zone around black...

An international team of scientists using three NASA satellites and a host of ground-based telescopes believes it has solved the greatest remaining mystery of the mysterious gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the universe. The shorter of two versions of these bursts appear to be caused by the collision of closely orbiting neutron stars or one of those compact stars and a black hole, said Don Lamb, the Louis Block Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the...

NASA -- Scientists have solved a 35-year-old mystery of the origin of powerful, split-second flashes of light called short gamma-ray bursts. These flashes, brighter than a billion suns yet lasting only a few milliseconds, have been simply too fast to catch... until now.If you guessed that a black hole is involved, you are at least half right. Short gamma-ray bursts arise from collisions between a black hole and a neutron star or between two neutron stars. In the first scenario, the black hole...

NASA -- Intricate wisps of glowing gas float amid a myriad of stars in this image created by combining data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is a supernova remnant, cataloged as N132D, ejected from the explosion of a massive star that occurred some 3,000 years ago. This titanic explosion took place in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby neighbor galaxy of our own Milky Way.The complex structure of N132D is due to the expanding supersonic shock wave...

Chandra -- Astronomers have found compelling evidence that a supernova shock wave has produced a large amount of cosmic rays, particles of mysterious origin that constantly bombard the Earth. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, supports theoretical arguments that shock waves from stellar explosions may be a primary source of cosmic rays.This finding is important for understanding the origin of cosmic rays, which are atomic nuclei that strike the Earth's atmosphere with...