Composite Image Shows Emissions Driven By Black Hole
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomy is more than merely using optical telescopes to take pretty pictures of distant nebulae and galaxies. Researchers also seek to understand complex systems in the universe...
Latest X-ray astronomy Stories
GREENBELT, Md., April 5, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), which NASA recently selected as its next Explorer Mission of Opportunity, will gather scientific data revealing the physics of the densest matter allowed in nature, and--from the same platform--will demonstrate a groundbreaking navigation technology that could revolutionize the agency's ability to travel to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. (Logo:...
WASHINGTON, April 5, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program has selected two missions for launch in 2017: a planet-hunting satellite and an International Space Station instrument to observe X-rays from stars. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) were among four concept studies submitted in September 2012. NASA determined these two...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have found that a region of space known as the Wing has fewer “metals” (elements with more than two protons in the nucleus) compared to most other areas within our own Milky Way galaxy. There are also relatively lower amounts of gas, dust and stars in the Wing compared to the Milky Way. This knowledge makes the Wing an excellent candidate for the study of the life cycle of stars and the gas lying between them. Not...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers using ground and space telescopes around the world have revealed a black hole and a star, intertwined in a cosmic tango together. Astronomers writing in Astronomy & Astrophysics say they have observed a black hole, known as MAXI J1659-152, and a red dwarf with a mass only 20 percent that of the Sun orbiting each other every 2.4 hours. The two cosmic bodies sit over half a million miles away from each other, but are...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online To study charge exchange, a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space, three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide-field-of-view soft X-ray camera. It is rare to have researchers from such diverse disciplines as heliophysics, astrophysics and planetary science teaming up, but that's exactly what happened at...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Pulsars are one of the most baffling classes of astronomical objects. Originally discovered as flickering sources of radio waves, pulsars were soon interpreted as rapidly rotating and strongly magnetized neutron stars about the size of a small city. Because of the oppositely directed beams of radiation emitted from their magnetic poles, pulsars are like cosmic lighthouses. The star spins and the beams sweep past the Earth, displaying a...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online NASA has released a pair of new images captured by the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) – one depicting a pair of black holes lurking inside a spiral galaxy, and the other featuring a look at the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. The two pictures, which were revealed Monday at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Long Beach, California, “showcase why NuSTAR is giving us an unprecedented look at the...
NASA Of the three telescopes carried by NASA's Swift satellite, only one captures cosmic light at energies similar to those seen by the human eye. Although small by the standards of ground-based observatories, Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) plays a critical role in rapidly pinpointing the locations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the brightest explosions in the cosmos. But as the proxy to the human eye aboard Swift, the UVOT takes some amazing pictures. The Swift team is...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online University of Southampton researchers reported in The Astrophysical Journal that they have observed bright X-ray flares in a nearby galaxy being produced by a white dwarf. The team made the discovery by detecting a dramatic, short-lived X-ray flare that was picked up by an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station (ISS). Astronomers used optical telescopes in South Africa and Chile to help observe the flare, called...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA said on Monday that our planet has entered a stream of high-speed solar wind that "escaped" through a coronal hole on the Sun. The solar wind that Earth is passing through has forecasters from the NOAA estimating a slight 20 percent chance of geomagnetic storms, but NASA says that high-latitude residents could benefit from the event. Sky watchers may want to step out into their backyards for the next few nights to catch...
Latest X-ray astronomy Reference Libraries
Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on December 2, 1990 at 1:49 AM EST and landed at Edwards AFB on December 10 at 9:54 PM PST. The shuttle orbited 144 times at an altitude of 190 nautical miles at an inclination of 28.45 degrees and travelled 3.7 million miles. The mission lasted 8 days, 23 hours, 5 minutes, and 8 seconds. The primary objectives were round-the-clock observations of the celestial sphere in ultraviolet and x-ray astronomy with the ASTRO-1 observatory consisting of...
Sample Entry: Astronomy is the scientific study of stars, planets, comets, galaxies, and other phenomena that occur outside Earth's atmosphere (e.g. cosmic radiation). Astronomy deals with the evolution, physics, chemical makeup, meteorology, and motion of celestial objects, and also the formation of the universe. The word Astronomy comes from the Greek words astron (meaning "star") and nomos (meaning "law"). Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences. Since the dawn of man, people always...
X-Ray Astronomy -- Although the more energetic X-rays (E > 30 keV) can penetrate the air at least for distances of a few meters (they would never have been detected and medical X-ray machines would not work if this was not the case) the Earth's atmosphere is thick enough that virtually none are able to penetrate from outer space all the way to the Earth's surface. X-rays in the 0.5 - 5 keV range, where most celestial sources give off the bulk of their energy, can be stopped by a few...
X-ray Pulsar -- This dramatic artist's vision shows a city-sized neutron star centered in a disk of hot plasma drawn from its enfeebled red companion star. Ravenously accreting material from the disk, the neutron star spins faster and faster emitting powerful particle beams and pulses of X-rays as it rotates 400 times a second. Could such a bizarre and inhospitable star system really exist in our Universe? Based on data from the orbiting Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite,...
Gamma-Ray Burst -- In astronomy, Gamma-ray bursters (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays that last from seconds to hours, the longer ones being followed by several days of X-ray afterglow. They occur at random positions in the sky several times each day. They are now believed to result from tremendous explosions in far away galaxies, during the creation of a black hole from a dying star or two colliding neutron stars. The black hole, surrounded by a rotating disk of matter falling into it,...
![NASA\](/media/gallery/fermi-gamma-ray-space-telescope/thumbs/thumbs_746305main_swift_xrt.jpg "NASA\")
