This is an unusual image, a mix of visible light (red) and X-rays (green). It reminds me of a water opal:

Where’s the other star? At the center of this supernova remnant should be the companion star to the star that blew up. Identifying this star is important for understanding just how Type Ia supernova detonate, which in turn could lead to a better understanding of why the brightness of such explosions are so predictable, which in turn is key to calibrating the entire nature of our universe. The trouble is that even a careful inspection of the center of SNR 0509-67.5 has not found any star at all. This indicates that the companion is intrinsically very faint — much more faint that many types of bright giant stars that had been previous candidates. In fact, the implication is that the companion star might have to be a faint white dwarf, similar to — but less massive than — the star that detonated. SNR 0509-67.5 is shown above in both visible light, shining in red as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, and X-ray light, shown in false-color green as imaged by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Putting your cursor over the picture will highlight the central required location for the missing companion star.

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Hughes et al., Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI /AURA)

I don’t know about you, but when I see a link entitled “The Pacman Nebula“, I expect it to look like… Pacman. Y’know? After staring at the below image for a few moments, trying to see the Pacman, I looked up NGC 281 and found the above. (Which does, after a fashion, resemble Pacman.)

However, all confusion aside, the below image is quite lovely, and shows a sparkly side of Pacman that went hitherto unnoticed. (I’ve discovered that I posted another nebulous Pacman portrait about a month ago. APOD did not mention the resemblance, or the nickname. I’m surprised!)

High-mass stars are important because they are responsible for much of the energy pumped into our galaxy over its lifetime. Unfortunately, these stars are poorly understood because they are often found relatively far away and can be obscured by gas and dust. The star cluster NGC 281 is an exception to this rule. It is located about 6,500 light years from Earth and, remarkably, almost 1,000 light years above the plane of the galaxy, giving astronomers a nearly unfettered view of the star formation within it.

This composite image of NGC 281 contains X-ray data from Chandra, in purple, with infrared observations from Spitzer, in red, green, blue. The high-mass stars in NGC 281 drive many aspects of their galactic environment through powerful winds flowing from their surfaces and intense radiation that creates charged particles by stripping electrons off atoms. The eventual deaths of massive stars as supernovas will also seed the galaxy with material and energy.

NGC 281 is known informally as the “Pacman Nebula” because of its appearance in optical images. In optical images the “mouth” of the Pacman character appears dark because of obscuration by dust and gas, but in the infrared Spitzer image the dust in this region glows brightly.

NGC 281 is typically divided into two subregions: the region in the upper middle of the image, which is surrounded by the purple 10-million-degree gas, and a younger region in the lower part of the image. There is evidence that the formation of a cluster, appearing in a beige cloud to the lower right, was triggered by a previous generation of star formation. Also, astronomers have found some isolated star formation on the left side of the image that appears to have been occurring at the same time as star formation in other regions of the cluster. This supports the idea that something externally triggered the “baby boom” of stars in NGC 281.

Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk; IR: NASA/JPL/CfA/S.Wolk

NASA’s telescope composite images come out so interesting-looking..!! And each color showing something different about the same area. It’s terrific! This one has HUGE visual appeal (in my book, anyway.) It’s like fireworks, shrouded in mist… against stars.

A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by NASA’s Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light-years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like “arms,” seen in wide-angle views of the system. These features were produced by tidal forces generated in the collision.

The collision, which began more than 100 million years ago and is still occurring, has triggered the formation of millions of stars in clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The most massive of these young stars have already sped through their evolution in a few million years and exploded as supernovas.

The X-ray image from Chandra shows huge clouds of hot, interstellar gas that have been injected with rich deposits of elements from supernova explosions. This enriched gas, which includes elements such as oxygen, iron, magnesium, and silicon, will be incorporated into new generations of stars and planets. The bright, point-like sources in the image are produced by material falling onto black holes and neutron stars that are remnants of the massive stars. Some of these black holes may have masses that are almost one hundred times that of the Sun.

The Spitzer data show infrared light from warm dust clouds that have been heated by newborn stars, with the brightest clouds lying in the overlapping region between the two galaxies.

The Hubble data reveal old stars and star-forming regions in gold and white, while filaments of dust appear in brown. Many of the fainter objects in the optical image are clusters containing thousands of stars.

The Chandra image was taken in December 1999. The Spitzer image was taken in December 2003. The Hubble image was taken in July 2004, and February 2005.

A colorful examination of the center of our Milky Way galaxy:

In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA’s Great Observatories — the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory — have collaborated to produce an unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy.

In this spectacular image, observations using infrared light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. The entire image width covers about one-half a degree, about the same angular width as the full moon.

Each telescope’s contribution is presented in a different color:

- Yellow represents the near-infrared observations of Hubble. These observations outline the energetic regions where stars are being born as well as reveal hundreds of thousands of stars.

- Red represents the infrared observations of Spitzer. The radiation and winds from stars create glowing dust clouds that exhibit complex structures from compact, spherical globules to long, stringy filaments.

- Blue and violet represent the X-ray observations of Chandra. X-rays are emitted by gas heated to millions of degrees by stellar explosions and by outflows from the supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s center. The bright blue blob on the left side is emission from a double star system containing either a neutron star or a black hole.

When these views are brought together, this composite image provides one of the most detailed views ever of our galaxy’s mysterious core.

Released on Monday: the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, as you’ve never seen it before (via NASA.) At bottom is a crop I made, showing more detail. This image release is part of Chandra’s 10th anniversary celebration.

A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole.

Permeating the region is a diffuse haze of X-ray light from gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by winds from massive young stars — which appear to form more frequently here than elsewhere in the Galaxy — explosions of dying stars, and outflows powered by the supermassive black hole — known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Data from Chandra and other X-ray telescopes suggest that giant X-ray flares from this black hole occurred about 50 and about 300 years earlier.

A strange image from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, taken during the 100 Hours of Astronomy.

A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand. In this image, the lowest energy X-rays that Chandra detects are colored red, the medium range is green, and the most energetic ones are blue. Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1700 years old as measured in Earth’s time-frame (referring to when events are observable at Earth) and is located about 17,000 light years away.