WIRED Staff
Science

Slideshow: Stunning Space Pix on the Net

The Chandra X-Ray Telescope has a gallery show. Astronomers have put online a collection of staggering images of black holes and supernovae captured by the orbiting X-Ray Telescope.
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The image shows the central pulsar of the Crab Nebula surrounded by tilted rings produced by high-energy particles that appear to have been flung outward over a distance of more than a light year from the pulsar. Perpendicular to the rings, jet-like structures produced by high-energy particles blast away from the pulsar. The diameter of the inner ring in the image is more than 1000 times the diameter of our solar system.NASA/CXC/SAO

See related story: Stunning Space Pix on the Net

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This X-ray image is a spectrum of a black hole, which is similar to the colorful spectrum of sunlight produced by a prism. The X-rays of interest are shown here recorded in the bright stripe that runs rightward and leftward from the center of the image. These X-rays are sorted precisely according to their energy with the highest-energy X-rays near the center of the image and the lower-energy X-rays farther out.

NASA/CXC/SAO
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A collage of images gathered in the first 2 years of the Chandra X-ray telescope.

NASA/CXC/SAO
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This image shows central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4631 as seen edge-on from NASA�s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope. The Chandra data (shown in blue and purple) provide the first unambiguous evidence for a halo of hot gas surrounding a galaxy that is very similar to our Milky Way. The structure across the middle of the image and the extended faint filaments (shown in orange) represent the observation from Hubble that reveals giant bursting bubbles created by clusters of massive stars.

NASA/CXC/SAO
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The X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a bright central star surrounded by a cloud of multimillion-degree gas in the planetary nebula known as the Cat's Eye. This composite image of Chandra and Hubble Space Telescope data offers astronomers an opportunity to compare where the hotter, X-ray emitting gas appears in relation to the cooler material seen in optical wavelengths.

NASA/UIUC/HST
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E0102-72 is the remnant of a supernova located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. This galaxy, located in the constellation Tucuna, is believed to have resulted from the explosion of a massive star several thousand years ago. Stretching across 40 light years of space, Chandra's image of the multi-million degree source resembles a flaming cosmic wheel.

NASA/CXC/SAO