Latest X-ray telescopes Stories

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...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two X-ray space observatories, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, have teamed up to measure definitively, for the first time, the spin rate of a black hole with a mass 2 million times that of our sun. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The supermassive black hole lies at the dust and gas-filled heart of a galaxy called NGC 1365, and it is...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Feb. 27, to announce black hole observations from its newest X-ray telescope, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray telescope. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The briefing participants are: -- Fiona Harrison, NuSTAR principal investigator, California Institute of Technology,...

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...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, set its X-ray eyes on a spiral galaxy and caught the brilliant glow of two black holes lurking inside. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The new image is being released Monday along with NuSTAR's view of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif. "These new images showcase why...

[ Watch the Video: The Diner at the Center of the Galaxy ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft has detected the Milky Way's central black hole eating a Thanksgiving snack. Supermassive black holes like the one in the middle of our galaxy sustain themselves by swallowing stars, planets, asteroids, comets and clouds of gas that wander around the galaxy. The space agency's new spacecraft allowed it to take an observation of the black hole...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) has released an image of the cauldron bubble as seen by its XMM-Newton space telescope. The cauldron bubble lies 5,000 light-years away from Earth, and is a bubble bursting with the fiery stellar wind of a star. Sitting in the constellation of Canis Major, the bubble spans nearly 60 light-years across and was blown by the stellar wind of the Wolf Rayet star HD 50896. This pink star is near the...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has spotted its first flare from Milky Way's black hole. The new telescope, launched June 13, is the only telescope capable of producing focused images of the highest-energy X-rays, and NASA said it has caught its first look at the black hole. "We got lucky to have captured an outburst from the black hole during our observing campaign," Fiona Harrison, the mission's principal...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's newest set of X-ray eyes in the sky, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), has caught its first look at the giant black hole parked at the center of our galaxy. The observations show the typically mild-mannered black hole during the middle of a flare-up. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "We got lucky to have captured an outburst from the black hole during our observing campaign,"...

This week, ESA’s Integral space observatory celebrates ten years since launch on 17 October 2002. Integral, short for International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, is equipped with two gamma-ray telescopes, an X-ray monitor and an optical camera. All four of Integral’s instruments point simultaneously at the same region of the sky to make complementary observations of high-energy sources. Integral is often bathed in gamma-ray bursts, the death cries of massive stars that have...