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Chandra Observatory: 15 Years of Glorious Pictures

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You’ll never see the universe as beautifully as the Chandra Observatory can see it. That’s because Chandra—which is celebrating its 15th anniversary in high-Earth orbit—sees in x-ray frequencies and you don’t. It’s a pity, actually that we’re blind in that bandwidth, because so much of the cosmos makes itself known there. Signals coming from planets, comets, supernovas, from the dark matter in the vast spaces between galaxies, all emit x-ray energy. The portraits they paint, with false color added to make them visible to our eyes, are more than static snapshots. They are, instead, pictures of processes: of matter spinning down the eternal drain of the black hole at the center of our galaxy; of galaxies colliding and merging; of the cool gas swirling at the center of the Andromeda galaxy.

Chandra records all of these cosmic processes—bits of history really, since at their great distances many of them played out in the remote past. In its own short life, it has crossed many boundaries in terrestrial history too. The satellite was lofted by the shuttle Columbia in 1999—a ship that was destined for catastrophe just four years later. It left Earth at a time when the World Trade Towers stood; when Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator, one year away from losing his bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives; when no one had ever heard of an iPhone. That doesn’t seem like much in a universe whose chapters play out in epochs, not mere years. But for a fragile machine from a fragile planet, 15 long years of exploratory work aren’t bad—especially when the post cards it sends home are so improbably dazzling. —Jeffrey Kluger

Crab Nebula, an extremely dense, rapidly rotating neutron star left behind by the explosion. The neutron star, also known as a pulsar, is spewing out a blizzard of high-energy particles, producing the expanding X-ray nebula seen by Chandra.
The Crab Nebula is an extremely dense, rapidly rotating neutron star left behind by a stellar explosion. The neutron star, also known as a pulsar, is spewing out a blizzard of high-energy particles, producing the expanding X-ray nebula seen by Chandra.NASA/CXC/SAO
A Surprisingly Bright Superbubble
This composite image shows a portion of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 160,000 light years from Earth.X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Mich./S.Oey, IR: NASA/JPL, Optical: ESO/WFI/2.2-m
Chandra Captures Galaxy Sparkling in X-rays
Like the Milky Way, the "Whirlpool Galaxy" (Messier 51 or NGC 5194) is a spiral with spectacular arms of stars and dust. It is located 30 million light years from Earth, and its face-on orientation gives us a perspective that we can never get of our own spiral home.X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan Univ./R.Kilgard, et al; Optical: NASA/STScI
The Massive Perseus Cluster
The Perseus Cluster is one of the most massive objects in the Universe, containing thousands of galaxies immersed in an enormous cloud of superheated gas. This image combines data equivalent to more than 17 days worth of observing time taken over a decade with Chandra. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/E.Bulbul, et al.
Exploring the Third Dimension of Cassiopeia A
A supernova remnant in the constellation Cassiopeia, the strongest x-ray source we can detect outside of our solar system. NASA/CXC/SAO
Runaway Pulsar Firing an Extraordinary Jet
An extraordinary jet trails behind a runaway pulsar in a composite image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) and the Australia Compact Telescope Array (green). The pulsar and its tail, in the lower right of this image, stretches for 37 light years, making it the longest jet ever seen from the Milky Way galaxy.X-ray: NASA/CXC/ISDC/L.Pavan et al, Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA Optical: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF
NGC 3576: Glowing Gas in the Milky Way
NGC 3576. a region of glowing gas in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way galaxy, is located about 9,000 light years from Earth. Such nebulas present a tableau of the drama stellar evolution, from the formation in vast dark clouds, their relatively brief (a few million years) lives, and the eventual destruction in supernova explosions. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/L.Townsley et al, Optical: ESO/2.2m telescope
Supernova Remnant G266.2-1.2
A Chandra observation of the supernova remnant G266.2-1.2 reveals the presence of extremely high-energy particles produced as the shock wave from this explosion expands into interstellar space. X-rays collected by Chandra (purple) have been combined with optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey (red, green, and blue).X-ray: NASA/CXC/Morehead State Univ/T.Pannuti et al, Optical: DSS
Galactic Pyrotechnics on Display
NGC 4258, a galaxy about 23 million light years away, is the site of impressive, ongoing fireworks comprised of a giant black hole, shock waves and vast reservoirs of gas. This galaxy, a spiral like the Milky Way, is famous for something that our galaxy doesn’t have: two extra spiral arms that glow in X-ray, optical and radio light. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Caltech/P.Ogle et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA
A New Look at an Old Friend
Just weeks after Chandra began operations in 1999, the telescope pointed at Centaurus A. This galaxy, at a distance of about 12 million light years from Earth, contains a gargantuan jet blasting away from a central supermassive black hole.X-ray: NASA/CXC/U. Birmingham/M. Burke et al.

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