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NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is one of NASA’s most scientifically productive space missions.
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The telescope has been in space for 25 years, discovering black holes and dark matter.
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Chandra’s best images show how the telescope reveals details that other telescopes cannot see.
NASA has been using X-rays to unravel the invisible secrets of the universe for decades.
The Einstein Observatory pioneered X-ray astronomy in the late 1970s, but the crown jewel of this scientific field is the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has been in space for 25 years.
Here are some of Chandra’s most stunning images and groundbreaking discoveries of the invisible X-ray universe.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has been capturing images of the invisible universe for 25 years.
The space telescope was launched on July 23, 1999, aboard the space shuttle Columbia. It was the heaviest payload the shuttle had ever carried.
“Chandra’s discoveries have continued to amaze and impress us over the past 25 years,” said Eileen Collins, commander of the Columbia mission, in a press release Monday.
X-rays do not fall within the visible light spectrum, but often indicate dramatic events in space.
X-rays are of particular interest to astronomers because they often come from objects that are extremely hot or from events that generate a lot of energy. Think of the debris flying out of an exploding star or the super-hot material swirling around a black hole.
Chandra often reveals new details that other telescopes cannot see.
In this image, which combines data from the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra, Webb’s observations paint an ethereal picture of the Pillars of Creation, a cloud formation from which new stars are constantly forming.
Chandra’s contribution reveals a sea of burning young stars clear in x-raysThese are the multi-colored points of light scattered across the image.
Take, for example, the bright purple spots in this galaxy. These are X-ray emitting objects that Chandra identified.
“Often you see a cloud of gas that’s glowing, and then there’s an X-ray source in the middle that’s pumping energy into it and making it glow,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who leads science data systems at Chandra, previously told Business Insider.
“If you don’t have Chandra, you can’t see that. So you’re missing a big part of the story,” he said.
Chandra’s X-ray vision showed that the universe is full of black holes.
Chandra’s other groundbreaking achievements include the first-ever direct evidence for the existence of dark matter, a completely invisible, mysterious substance that makes up about 27% of the universe.
Chandra was also the first to directly detect colliding neutron stars, which sent ripples in space-time – called gravitational waves – through the universe.
X-rays from Jupiter’s aurora also became visible.
On Earth, we call them the Northern Lights and the Southern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis and Australis. They are the dancing, colorful ribbons of light that sometimes appear in the Arctic sky, sometimes coming as close to the equator as Arizona.
The aurora is caused by charged particles from the sun, which create a similar effect on the poles of other planets. Chandra saw the phenomenon on Jupiter.
The image also shows clouds of X-rays surrounding the gas giant.
In total, Chandra has made nearly 25,000 observations.
It has been one of NASA’s most productive astrophysics missions, with scientists writing more than 10,000 peer-reviewed papers based on the data.
Some of the most stunning images have been created in collaboration with other observatories, such as Webb.
By joining forces, scientists were able to identify the likely source of a mysterious structure called the “Green Monster” in the supernova remnant pictured here. You can see it just right of center, where a green loop disrupts the blue and red rippling out into space.
Chandra data revealed a connection between the Green Monster and the blast wave that shot out of the star when it exploded. They think the blast wave created the Green Monster when it crashed into the material surrounding the star.
Chandra has even set her sights on the center of our galaxy.
In May, astronomers using Chandra discovered a vent venting hot gas from the Milky Way’s center. They think the chimney of escaping gas could be coming from outbursts of the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole.
Here you see a snapshot of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Chandra also revealed that the supermassive black hole of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, is rotating rapidly.
Chandra discovered that the black hole is spinning so fast that it is compressing space-time like a football.
Chandra may be nearing the end of its mission due to drastic budget cuts.
NASA’s 2025 budget request cut Chandra’s funding from $68 million to $41 million. Then the budget proposes to give the observatory $26.6 million per year until it drops drastically to $5.2 million in 2029.
Chandra’s surgical team has said that this is exactly the amount needed dismantle the telescope and cease its activities.
Chandra is still fully functional and continues to make visually stunning discoveries.
By studying Chandra detections of the X-ray emission from neutron stars, such as the one at the center of this supernova remnant, scientists recently discovered that neutron stars may contain a new type of ultradense matter.
In the years remaining, Chandra could reveal even more unseen secrets of the cosmos.
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