News from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory

[Whitters]

NASA's Chandra Proves Black Hole Influence is Far Reaching

"Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered evidence of energetic
plumes – particles that extend 300,000 light years into a massive cluster of galaxies. The plumes
are due to explosive venting from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, and they provide
dramatic new evidence of the influence a black hole can have over intergalactic distances."

More: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18423

[Rick]

Eta Carinae brightens Chandra's day

NASA has released a striking new image of explosive neighbouring star Eta Carinae. The star is huge: somewhere between 100 and 150 times the size of our own sun. It is also consuming its fuel at a truly astonishing rate.

The star is currently teetering along a knife edge, almost at equilibrium: its gravity just about balanced by the huge outward pressure generated by the nuclear furnace at its core. But the star is incredibly unstable, and the tiniest perturbation could cause a massive eruption of material.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/21/eta_carinae_go_boom/

[Carole]

Heaviest Stellar Black Hole Discovered in Nearby Galaxy by Chandra

Astronomers have located an exceptionally massive black hole in orbit around a huge companion star. This result has intriguing implications for the evolution and ultimate fate of massive stars.

The black hole is part of a binary system in M33, a nearby galaxy about 3 million light years from Earth. By combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the mass of the black hole, known as M33 X-7, was determined to be 15.7 times that of the Sun. This makes M33 X-7 the most massive stellar black hole known. A stellar black hole is formed from the collapse of the core of a massive star at the end of its life.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/07-112.html

Carole

[Rick]

Supersized stellar blackhole prompts model rewrite

Researchers have located the most massive stellar black hole ever discovered, just three million light-years away in a nearby galaxy. The stellar remnant is in a binary system known as M33, orbiting a huge companion star. The researchers say the find is "intriguing", because of what it suggests about stellar evolution.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/18/blackhole_supersized/

[Rick]

Ancient pulsar still radiating like a young 'un

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected what the agency describes as a "surprisingly active" ancient pulsar - the oldest such body ever spied in the X-ray band and still radiating after around 200m years.

PSR J0108-1431, aka J0108 for those in a hurry, lies at around 770 light-years from Earth. It's an "isolated" pulsar (not caught up in a binary system) formed when a star substantially more massive than our own Sun collapsed in a supernova event to form a diminutive but very dense, rapidly-spinning neutron star.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/03/ancient_pulsar/

[Rick]

Stargazers spy elusive binary black hole system

Astronomers at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) believe they've spotted a binary black hole system - two monsters orbiting each other at the centre of a quasar* 5bn light-years from Earth.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/05/binary_black_hole/

[mickw]

And more:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090304-binary-black-holes.html

[mickw]

Tiny and dying but still-powerful stars called pulsars spin like crazy and light up their surroundings, often with ghostly glows. So it is with PSR B1509-58, which long ago collapsed into a sphere just 12 miles in diameter after running out of fuel.

And what a strange scene this one has created.

In a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light.

The star now spins around at the dizzying pace of seven times every second -- as pulsars do -- spewing energy into space that creates the scene.

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090404-chandra-nebula.html

[mickw]

An interstellar pileup involving four galaxy clusters has become the most crowded cluster collision ever detected.

Astronomers spotted the galaxy clusters involved in a triple merger, the first time that such a phenomenon has been recorded. NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope joined the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to safely observe the mess from 5.4 billion light years away.

The cosmic collision is taking place in MACSJ0717, a 13 million-light-year-long stream of galaxies, gas and dark matter known as a filament. That filamentary freeway continues to pour galaxies and other matter into a region already full of galaxies.

"In addition to this enormous pileup, MACSJ0717 is also remarkable because of its temperature," said Cheng-Jiun Ma, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii. "Since each of these collisions releases energy in the form of heat, MACS0717 has one of the highest temperatures ever seen in such a system."

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090416-galaxy-crowd.html

[Rick]

Deployed by the space shuttle on 23 July 1999, the Chandra telescope is Nasa's flagship mission exploring the realms of X-ray astronomy.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8163008.stm

[Rick]

A group of galaxies has been seen at a record distance from Earth thanks to the assistance of Bristol scientists.

The cluster, named JKCS041, is 10.2 billion light-years away - a billion light-years further away than the current record holder.

Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Observatory made the discovery with other telescopes.

"It's like finding a T. Rex fossil that's much older than any other known," said Dr Ben Maughan, from the University of Bristol.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/8320570.stm

[mickw]

Like the smoke left in the sky after a round of fireworks, debris remaining in the wake of a supernova could reveal exactly how that star exploded even though hundreds or thousands of years have passed.

That's what scientists have determined from images of such leftovers taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

"It's almost like the supernova remnants have a 'memory' of the original explosion," said lead researcher Laura Lopez of the University of California at Santa Cruz. "This is the first time anyone has systematically compared the shape of these remnants in X-rays in this way."

More on Space.com

[mickw]

A bullet-shaped object can be seen rocketing out of the huge explosion from a dying star in a new image taken by a powerful X-ray space telescope.

The new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows N49, the aftermath of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that neighbors our own Milky Way.

The cosmic bullet in the scene was caught when astronomers used Chandra for over 30 hours to get a long exposure. [Gallery - The X-ray Universe.]

More:   Bullet

[Rick]

A small black hole has been observed blowing a vast bubble of hot gas 1,000 light-years across.

The gas is expanding because it is being heated by powerful particle "jets" being released by the black hole.

The observations were made by the Very Large Telescope in Chile and Nasa's Chandra space observatory.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10555633.stm

[mickw]

A galactic "supervolcano" in the massive galaxy M87 is erupting, blasting gas outwards. The cosmic volcano — driven by a giant black hole in M87's center — is preventing hundreds of millions of new stars from forming.

An image, taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array, captures the drama in action. [Photo of the galactic "supervolcano."]

"Our results show in great detail that supermassive black holes have a surprisingly good control over the evolution of the galaxies in which they live," said Norbert Werner of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Melo Park, Calif., who led one of two studies of M87's black hole and its effects. "The black hole's reach extends ever farther into the entire cluster, similar to how one small volcano can affect practically an entire hemisphere on Earth."

More:   M87